


Faith and Feather

by Cheloya



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Compilation What Compilation, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon, Summons & Summoning Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-13 13:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 103,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10514688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheloya/pseuds/Cheloya
Summary: Rewritten. Updates every day in April 2017. Nearly two years after Sephiroth's fall, AVALANCHE regroups at Yuffie's behest to track down the murderer/kidnapper of the Five Mighty Gods. The disappearance of Godo and Staniv, however, is just the beginning.





	1. Prologue

In the north, the land alternates between plateau and mountain. Here, it huddles against the biting wind; there, it spreads itself low and thin and flings up cliffs to keep the ocean at bay. Each day in the north is a battle, but the battle for the crater is one long abandoned by human and fiend alike.

There were monsters here, once, and the people in Glacier Village still tell tales of walking gods that shelter in the mountains. But since Meteor – the second meteor, scholars will huff, but it is the only meteor that matters to most – the crater has been silent and dead but for the deceptive glow of the Lifestream. Here, the Planet works tirelessly to repair the damage to her ice-encrusted face. Here, if there were only eyes to see it, waits the wraith.

At first, it had been content to wait. But as the Planet toiled, her energy lessened, and the strength of the wraith waned with her. It has been patient long enough.

It calls for brethren, voiceless, but with power enough to resonate, given a path.

Out to the west, someone stirs and reaches forth with a sob that echoes down dark corridors. _Find me._ To the south, someone – something – jerks from slumber, and screams to combat tears. _There was nothing I could do._ And to the east, someone sighs and shies from the call. _Let me lie._

The wraith calls again, and then falls silent.

It waits.

* * *

[Day 1, 1130 Wutai Standard Time]

The air was thick and heavy with summer and the threatening storm. Outside, there was sweetness and moisture in the atmosphere. Inside, the darkness provided only partial relief. All of Wutai slumped on their walkways and porches, fanning themselves listlessly or flinging their windows wide to tempt a rare breeze.

The Pagoda's latest maid crossed the square and ascended the hidden staircase at the rear of the Pagoda of Five Mighty Gods. She nudged the servants’ entry open with her toes; it was too hot, and the tray too heavy, for formality. Besides, she thought as hot, foul air rushed out at her, Lord Gorky was probably asleep. She'd serve Lady Shake fi—

Her scream brought the village to sudden, uncomfortable alertness.

Later, all the shutters in the Pagoda were flung wide, but in the stillness of summer there was no masking the scent of blood.

* * *


	2. The Call

[Day 3, 2100 Kalm Standard Time]

Music filtered through Seventh Heaven, already subtle sound made muzzy by the smoke-filled air. Tifa hummed as she wiped the bar down, and mused about the lung capacity of Cid and Reno, that just the pair of them could manage to smoke up her bar like it was a regular night, and not just a friendly reunion.

For all that Seventh Heaven catered for five times AVALANCHE’s number on a regular basis, the bar seemed full enough. The music was soft, just loud enough that she could keep track of the songs and murmur along as she cleaned up her kitchen. Maybe an hour ago the Turks, plus Cid and Reeve, had pulled three tables together and set about exchanging gil via poker – which meant it all went straight to Rude, judging by the toothpicks at the bald man’s elbow. Reno and Cid sat opposite the same table, both chain-smoking, both with their cards at a dramatic tilt away from the other. Tifa was honestly a little surprised that they could still see their cards, given the smoke wreathing the table.

Barret and Red were far from the ash epicentre at a table near the fireplace, conversing in rumbles that Tifa couldn’t distinguish from across the room. Marlene was cradled in one of her father’s arms, exhausted but not ready to admit it yet. If Yuffie were here, she’d be in bed already – the ninja had a knack with kids that came, Barret claimed, from bein’ one of them, and no amount of village-ruling was gonna change that, not in a million years – but Yuffie wasn’t here, and since Cait was taking care of business as Reeve’s alter-ego in Midgar Central tonight, there was no one but Red for Marlene to play with, and no one but Reno to argue/bully her into bed. Barret had reservations about this. Given that Reno’s grasp of appropriate language was about as strong as Cid’s, this was not altogether surprising.

Cloud was behind the bar with her, rinsing their dishes before he stacked them in the dishwasher (industrial, and the sort of thing Tifa would have sold both her legs for, before Meteor). His motions were slow and rhythmic, his attention clearly elsewhere as he passed a sponge over the plates. Tifa flipped her tea towel over one shoulder and bumped her hip into his to get his attention. He blinked. The plates clattered briefly against the sink, against each other. Then he stilled his hands and met her eyes, the slightest furrow in his forehead belying the innocently raised brows.

"What are you thinking about?" Tifa dipped a hand into the water to collect their cutlery. Cloud shrugged, started washing plates again as she sorted the knives and forks into the dishwasher.

"Just thinking," he said. "It’s pretty quiet here without Yuffie or Cait Sith."

"And not quiet enough without Vincent," Tifa agreed, eyes warm and sympathetic. "I’m surprised it’s not louder, actually. It’s been a whole year."

Cloud shrugged again. "It’s called Kalm for a reason, I guess. Besides, according to channel eight, half the world has moved to Midgar for the week."

Tifa snorted. "No wonder Reeve came out here in person." She glanced toward the poker table, smiling at the sight of Reeve and Elena sweating out another hand together without resorting to smoking or sunglasses. Slowly but surely the smile faded from her face. "...it is really quiet without them, huh." She rested her elbows on the bar, stretching out her back. "But we did our best with Vincent. And there's no getting Yuffie out of Wutai lately."

"Not until she has another war with Godo," Cloud grumbled. Tifa laughed. "But I know what you mean. At least Reeve only has a city to worry about."

Tifa shook her head, smiling despite herself. Reeve didn’t see it that way. But then, before Meteor, the largest group of people he’d needed to handle at a time had been an executive committee. Now, he was expected to address hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. Little surprise that he’d relegated the task of celebrating the destruction of Meteor to a robotic doppelganger. "And at least he has a passing acquaintance with rules. Yuffie’s probably going out of her mind."

Cid swore explosively and slammed his hand down on the table. The only word Tifa would have repeated in Marlene’s presence was ‘fold’. Reno chuckled, prompting another (slightly quieter, thanks to Barret’s disapproving laser-glare from the far side of the room) torrent of profanity, and nodded to Rude, who cracked his neck, which seemed to make Elena nervous. In the silence that followed Cid’s retirement from the game, it was very easy to make out the sound of someone pounding up the front stairs. Tifa frowned at Cloud.

"I thought we told everyone we were closed tonight..."

The pounding feet slowed as they reached the top of the stairs, but rather than stopping, whoever it was ploughed straight into the door, rattling the windows along the front of the bar, and letting out an _oof_ that was instantly recognisable. Tifa was over the bar by the time the visitor had started pounding on the door. "Hey, guys! Let me in! HEY!"

Tifa flung the door wide, grinning widely, and her expression froze as she took in the girl on her doorstep, who was by now less girl and more bedraggled mud monster. "What did you do, swim here?" Tifa asked, too surprised for anything else, and the teenager on the doorstep swelled with indignant rage.

"Nice to see you, too, Boobs!" she shrilled, hands on hips. "I knew you couldn’t have a decent party without me; you must’ve been really desperate if you had to invite the Turks."

As Reno and Elena made indignant reply in the background, Tifa tugged her inside and put her arms around the girl’s shoulders, squeezing tightly enough that she squawked and demanded to be let go of, gawd, my lungs’ll collapse. Tifa pulled back enough to grin and put her hands on the girl’s cheeks, icy and damp. She frowned. "Yuffie, you’re freezing. Why didn’t you call?"

Yuffie flapped her hands, tossing her head and sending sleet-dampened hair flicking across her face. "Kinda hard to call from Wutai at the moment. H-have you seen the weather reports? Biggest storm in—" She took a deep breath and clenched her teeth, and it was only then that Tifa realised she was almost crying.

"Yuffie, what’s wrong?"

The reluctant stir of activity stilled in the wake of Tifa’s question. Red’s head rose from the floor, twisted awkwardly to see the door. Cloud had emerged from behind the bar, carrying a small towel and a steaming drink. Yuffie stayed silent for a few seconds, jaw clenched, glaring sullenly at the floor. Then she looked up and her eyes were cold and angry, grey like the sleet outside.

"Godo’s disappeared. Staniv, too. Chekhov, Shake and Gorky are dead." The words were flat as she dug into her pocket, and a fine tremor of rage filtered in when she held her find out for the room to see. "I need your help."

* * *

[Day 4, 1200 Central Standard Time]

The ocean did not so much toss waves around him as pelt them into his sides, dump them over his head. It was the kind of weather amenable only to madmen and fiends, and as the lightning made blinding, crackling webs through the heavy cloud, Vincent wondered idly which party he could count himself among.

His cloak was half frost and half seawater, and the already heavy fabric hung from him like shredded skin on a waterlogged corpse. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his neck, his shoulders, blending with the ancient double-breasted suit. Obsydia looked no better, despite her oily, water-resistant plumage, but she made no complaint as he pressed her on northward, eyes peeled for some sign of the shoreline. He found it, and moments later was forced to cling more tightly to Obsydia as she jerked suddenly to the right with a sound of alarm; a chunk of ice the size of a motor vehicle rose on the crest of a wave and plunged beneath the surface of the water they had just travelled over. Vincent eyed the ocean ahead of them, the approaching line of the cliffs, and moved his fingers slightly in Obsydia’s feathers.

"Good girl."

The chocobo warked in smug acknowledgement, putting on speed as she wove through the irregular waves thrown up by the shoreline, spreading her short wings whenever she was forced to ascend to the crest of a wave. It took no more than an hour to reach the shore, though it took him that again to climb it, sometimes leading the bird, and sometimes letting her lead. They could have come around from the east, but Vincent hadn’t expected to come so far north. He couldn’t double back now just for the sake of avoiding a difficult climb.

He was too close. He could feel it.

"Come," he murmured to Obsydia, and set off through the snow, her harness looped and dangling around his claw. At his hip, the PHS beeped softly, once. He had received calls while he was out of range, in the storm. Vincent didn’t bother to look at the display. It would be Tifa. It had been for the better part of a month. And while he had, in all honesty, missed the first call, he was beginning to feel slightly guilty about avoiding all subsequent calls, though he knew it was for the best. Reunions were all very well, but not when he was feeling so... out of sorts. Far safer for everyone involved if he did not go to Kalm.

Vincent lost feeling in his toes only a mile or so inland, and began looking for a place to settle for the night. By the time he found shelter – and it was barely adequate; a stand of pines with boughs weighed down by snow – he had begun to lose some fine motor coordination. He set upon the smallest of the trees, hacking at its branches, and when he had removed the vast majority of its needles and delivered these to Obsydia so that she could see to her own nesting arrangements, he cleared the snow around the base of the largest tree and set a fire a few feet from the trunk.

He was beginning to remember what being dry felt like when his PHS rang again, startling Obsydia to her feet. Vincent unclipped it from his belt and stared at the blinking display. It was a level one call; emergency priority from Cloud. Would they resort to such things just to force him to answer? He could not risk it. Reluctantly, he thumbed open the display.

"Vincent."

" _Took your time._ " Cloud’s voice was wry. Vincent wondered if he had underestimated the man’s unwillingness to cry wolf. " _We have a problem. What are you doing now?_ "

Vincent considered. "I’m busy. What kind of problem?"

" _The political kind, maybe._ " Vincent heard other voices in the background, then silence as Cloud put his hand over the receiver, and finally the tail end of his frustrated comment to whoever was with him. " _—ndle this. Vincent, how soon can you be in Wutai?_ "

Vincent blinked. Frowned. "It would take three days were I to leave immediately, but I cannot. What kind of problem?" His tone let Cloud know how he felt about repeating himself, even to the leader of AVALANCHE.

" _Three dead, two missing in the Pagoda of Five Mighty Gods,_ " Cloud said flatly. " _Yuffie’s father is one of the missing. No leads so far._ "

Vincent closed his eyes. From the little he had heard, Wutai had been pulling itself back together after the fall of Shinra. Yuffie must have been devastated. "...how is she?"

" _She’s..._ " Cloud’s voice faltered. Vincent’s jaw tightened. " _She’s right here, hang on._ "

He waited. A few seconds later, Yuffie’s voice filtered across the line, entirely out of place in the snow and the wind. " _She’d be about twenty times better if everyone would lay off the materia jokes, har har har, I_ don’t _think_ ," she said, and there was a tension there that had nothing to do with whatever gentle ribbing she had recently endured. But her voice gentled somewhat as she, presumably, stopped making a face at the room around her and started concentrating on the phone call. " _Nice to know you pick up an emergency signal, Vinnie, I’ll remember that for April Fool’s._ "

"I’ve been busy," Vincent said. (Busy _sleeping_ , Yuffie scoffed determinedly.) "Give me details."

" _I don’t have many. Two days ago, a maid came screaming out of the pagoda. Gorky, Shake and Chekhov looked like they had a run in with Hellmasker, and Staniv and Godo are AWOL._ " Her voice did not quite shake. " _My Leviathan’s in two pieces, and I don’t know about you, Vinnie, but I do not know anything that can break materia so clean; it’s like a laser cutter, except materia defract lasers, so—" A quick huff of breath. "Also, there is this storm system hanging around, and it’s not doing anything, and it’s not going away, and the entire village is pretty much sure that we’re cursed, so you should come over and be pessimistic with the elders, you’d fit right in._ "

"You are returning there?"

" _All of us are, yeah._ " A pause. " _Reeve’s letting me borrow the Turks and all, so you totally have to come out of creepy misplaced company loyalty or something. All the cool kids are doing it._ "

Despite himself, Vincent almost smiled. "I am otherwise engaged, but I will be there as soon as possible."

" _You’re what?_ " Skepticism was plain. " _Vinnie, c’mon. There’s no way you’re doing anything more important than me. Are you trying to blow me off? If you don’t want to come drink awesome cheap terrible maitais in Turtle’s Paradise with me, it’s cool, y’know, you can say it. I totally understand if you are too scared to go up against me. Me and Reno,_ " she added, to an appreciative hoot in the background. Even Vincent could tell the humour was becoming strained; drinking started young in Yuffie’s culture, but he was certain that for the Lady of Wutai, cheap cocktails were frowned upon. If she was trying this hard to keep up her front...

"I will be there as soon as possible," he repeated. "I am following up on a concern. If all is well, I will see you in several days."

" _And if it isn’t?_ " Yuffie asked. Vincent pursed his lips.

"Perhaps the next call will be mine."


	3. Blood and Shadow

[Day 5, 0400 Central Standard Time]

Vincent woke in darkness to a soft, querulous warble, and the insistent nudge of a beak at his shoulder. Obsydia’s large pale eyes would have been obvious even without his enhanced vision, but his hand still twitched toward Death Penalty. His fingers were stiff with cold despite the glove, a fact made all the more obvious when Obsydia twitched away from his fingers with a shrill sound of disapproval. Vincent shifted, uncomfortably aware of the chill in his limbs, and reached for her saddlebags, and the greens she was no doubt looking for.

Obsydia’s stomach thus satisfied, Vincent stood and paced the length of the cave. He had very nearly missed the massing blizzard altogether, despite its obvious strength. He had heard it all through the night, raging on the far side of the barrier of ice and snow he had created with some assistance from a low-level materia. He was fortunate to have found shelter at all, and yet part of him – the part, he suspected, without true sense or inhibition – wanted out of the cage he’d made.

The Galian Beast was restless, too.

Vincent went to the wall of ice and thrust his gauntlet through it. The ice cracked loudly, showering his bronze-tipped boots with frost and larger chunks, and cold air rushed in through the hole, causing Obsydia to make a shrill sound of complaint. But the wind was a whistle, not a howl, and Vincent went to work tearing at the barrier until he could slip through the ice and into the outside world.

The sky was clear – or as clear as the sky ever got, in the north – and without really meaning to, Vincent drew a few quick, snuffling breaths through his nose. Almost immediately he shook his head and stepped further outside the cave, testing each footstep cautiously in the snow, to check for signs of the storm in a more human fashion, but the Galian Beast’s eagerness was reassuring in its own way. There was little enough danger if it was so keen to move onward.

Rather than risk an avalanche by using Fire, Vincent tore at the ice around the cave’s mouth until he had cleared a gap through which Obsydia could pass. Limbs warm and tingling with the exertion, he swung himself aboard the chocobo and nudged her into motion, letting her pick her own way through the drifts.

Ascending toward the Great Northern Crater took some hours; the sun had reached its zenith before he crested the crater’s lip. Obsydia only shifted nervously the first time he tried to coax her into descending into the crater itself, and Vincent pushed her no harder – he dismounted and tied her reigns to her saddle. She had done well to carry him so far, with Chaos’ steady awareness growing in his mind. To ask her to approach whatever was causing the _demon _distress would be an unnecessary cruelty, and so he entered the crater alone, or alone as he could be.__

____

The warm green glow of the Lifestream hung everywhere in the crater, its light reflected in the swirling mists, in the ice-encrusted rocks. If not for the pervasive grey of stone and shadow and the intense cold, it might have appeared inviting. As it was, the slow-healing furrows and cracks in the planet’s surface combined with glowing mako green gave the crater an eerie atmosphere that was only enhanced by the high, wordless wail of the wind.

Vincent felt the curious, sickly sensation of Chaos shifting in his mind, and stopped, cautiously turning until he felt that the demon’s focus matched his own. Hesitating when that focus was the centre of the crater, and listening again to the wind’s howl, noticing something else behind, beneath the sound. Perhaps not even truly audible.

Vincent stepped forward. The mist swirled around him, clinging to his limbs with the eerie green glow of a hundred thousand lives to be. It was impossible to tell how far he had gone; the crater’s edge was long invisible behind him, and in the crater all he had to guide himself was the rapt attention of Chaos upon the thing in the crater’s depths.

There was plenty of time for him to note the absence of fiends, and to firm and refirm his grip upon the Death Penalty.

And then, when he was sure he had been walking blindly through the mist for more than long enough, a gust of wind swept the vapour momentarily away, and Vincent saw the centre of the crater. He saw dark, jagged spires, still reflecting that peaceful, poisonous green, and inside it there was a shadow, a nucleus to the black crystal formation. Vincent stepped closer, barrel trained upon the shadow in the crystals, unconvinced that the formation was completely solid—

—and Chaos surged, flooding his senses, drowning his mind, limbs changing, flesh growing and mutating, wings peeling from his back and shoulders as the demon carved its way out of his flesh.

The crater dropped away from his vision as Chaos took to the sky, black crystal vanishing again beneath green swirling mist, and before his mind slipped beneath Chaos’ at last, Vincent wondered what could possess the demon to lead him here, and flee.

* * *

[Day 5, 0600 Wutai Standard Time]

It was mid-afternoon when they arrived in Wutai. The heat would have been stifling even without the added humidity from the storm that threatened. Reno, still partially crippled by a hangover, felt like he’d been half-digested and then thrown up in an oven, but it wouldn’t do him any good to complain. The boss had sent them out here to give Kisaragi a hand, and that was what they were gonna do. Even if Reno had to have a few private moments with convenient shrubbery and large decorative urns along the way.

The town didn’t look too bad, if Reno was any judge. A little quiet, but then, everywhere was quiet in comparison to Midgar, and given that they’d probably had a commemorative festival all their own last night, it wasn’t like anyone except the cleanup crew was likely to surface in any major way. Still, it being after lunch, Reno would have expected _some _people to be out and about, particularly with the Highwind descending on the village and letting half a dozen of them climb down into the middle of Kisaragi House. That the streets were still quiet when they left was Reno’s first indication that Yuffie had not been kidding about the superstition surrounding the incident. He could only hope she’d been able to have the place cleaned up; Reno didn’t mind a little bloodshed, but his stomach wasn’t up to it today.__

____

____

Elena was either spooked by the quiet, or sympathising with the delicate state of his head. Probably the former, but Reno was happy enough with that – she usually took great pleasure in reminding him, the morning after, why drinking to excess was frowned upon. She walked ahead of him, not-quite-with Tifa, as they crossed the cobbled courtyard, a short and mismatched train headed by Yuffie and caught up by the Turks. Rude was behind him, but there was a certain tense quality even to his silence, and Reno would have bet a hundred gil that he was flexing his hands like he always did before a fight.

There was a guard on the front door of the pagoda, but he didn’t look happy to be there, and he was standing at the bottom of the stairs rather than before the ornate sliding doors that led inside the pagoda. He bowed low as Yuffie approached, and stayed bowed even as Tifa and Cloud passed. Reno gave the flat of the man’s back a raised eyebrow as he passed. Clearly the guy hadn’t spoken to Yuffie much on a personal level.

They didn’t pause at the head of the stairs. Yuffie threw the doors open as if she had a personal vendetta against them and vanished into the gloom within. Cloud followed, as did Tifa after a moment’s hesitation and a hitch of breath that told Reno he did not want to smell whatever had happened in this building. Elena walked right in with no more song and dance than a wrinkle of her nose; she was such a good girl, really, Reno thought, and it’d really be a shame if the Turk leader couldn’t hold up as well as technically-a-rookie and a girl, right? Right. Suck it up, Reno. He walked over the threshold, breathed in gingerly through his mouth, and decided right then and there that he would not be using his nose. If the air in the room tasted that strongly of meat and spilled blood, there was no way he wanted to smell it.

It was dim enough in the pagoda that he couldn’t make out much through his tinted goggles. He pulled them away from his eyes, up into the jagged flame red mess of his hair, and winced. The mats that covered the floors in any self-respecting building in Wutai, well, those had been replaced pretty quickly. But judging by the blood still smeared on the walls, the silk screens, and the heavy metallic taste of blood in the air, the rest of the building wasn’t going to be cleaned up quite so easily. Reno glanced up at the ceiling and saw the discolouration and slight sagging that meant blood had seeped right through from the second floor.

"I had my cousin photograph the entire building thoroughly." Yuffie’s voice was as bland as she could make it, wound tight with frustration. "He’ll be finished developing most of them by now. The only floor I couldn’t let them touch was Omni, up top."

"How come?" Elena asked. Yuffie jerked her head toward the stairs and shrugged her skinny shoulders, rounded with the weight of silk.

"See for yourself. I don’t think a camera could have done it justice."

That didn’t sound promising. Reno glanced at Rude, nodded to Elena. The two of them started toward the stairs straight away, Yuffie preceding them with surprising swiftness given the layers she was wearing. Reno followed more slowly, gauging the lay of the crimescene from what he could see on the walls, and on the bloodstains in the ceiling. The mats on the second floor had been replaced, too, though it was less obvious here – there wasn’t half as much blood on the walls.

The third floor more than made up for that. It seemed like every square inch of silk and wooden wall had been darkened with blood, and the perverse freshness of the new matting on the floor only made the gore on the walls more pronounced. The stairs to the fourth floor were sticky under his shoes as he started up them, trying not to touch the wall or the bannister despite the narrowness of the staircase. He tried not to think too hard about what they were sticky with.

Reno had to squint and fumble for his goggles when he hit the fourth floor. It was... it was perfect. No blood. No sign of it, unless you counted the faintest trace of footprints on the mat nearest the staircase. The shutters were wide open, the room as pleasant and airy as any room was likely to get during a Wutaian summer. Reno walked along the edge of the room to the stairs to the top floor of the pagoda and went up the stairs feeling as though he’d invaded some kind of sanctum.

Tseng’s place had been like that, austere and impeccable. Reno had only been there once. It had given him the same sense of being an invader, even though Tseng had arranged the visit; it made him feel smeared. He wondered I that was normal for a filthy foreign dog or whether it was just him.

He was still thinking about Tseng while he climbed to the top floor, so for a minute, the raised voices made perfect sense. Then his eyes narrowed and he picked up speed, hitting the top foor at a jog and grabbing the handrail as a potential launching point before he’d fully assessed the situation. Yuffie was right in front of Elena, arguing hotly with the blond Turk, who had both hands up defensively, but was starting to get annoyed if the changes in her stance were any indication.

"Hey," Reno said, and then a little louder, " _Hey_. Cool down. What the hell’s the problem, Kisaragi?" Because sure, Elena could be hot-headed, but she usually didn’t start it.

Yuffie’s eyes were dark and furious when she turned to him. "She says she’s seen it before," she snapped. "Where the hell has she seen it before?"

"What?" Reno looked to Elena, bewildered. "Seen what?"

"On the floor," Rude said. His deep voice, so rarely heard, gave pause to all other conversation. Reno craned past Yuffie and Elena to see more of the top floor of the pagoda, and felt the air leave his lungs without any real intent on his part.

In the middle of the floor, burned through the matting and into the wood below, there was a dark circle, maybe nine feet across. It was a crest, Reno thought dumbly, watching the snaking lines charred into the wood. A crest, like you saw in the movies, representing a house or a clan of samurai or something—

"Oh," said Reno.

"Yeah," said Yuffie, as Tifa and Cloud arrived at the top of the stairs. "‘Oh’. There’s no record of a _mon _like this. I’m still going through our oldest scrolls, but Grandma Roko and Grandma Asako don’t recognise it, so there’s no way it’s a family of ours. And now your rookie says she’s seen it before." Her arms crossed. Despite the pink and plum silk of her robe, or perhaps because of it, her expression was darker than Reno had ever seen. He glanced to Elena, who made a helpless motion with her hands.__

____

____

"I don’t know where," she said. "And I mean, I might be wrong. They’re pretty complicated, aren’t they? So I might be wrong."

"But you don’t think you are," said Cloud. "You think you’ve seen it before."

Elena glanced toward Yuffie, and nodded slowly. "I’m... pretty sure."

"Then that’s a lead," Cloud said, before Reno could say anything to that effect. "Think about where you might’ve seen it, and we can start looking there again. In the meantime, Yuffie, we should get those pictures from your cousin."

"Right," Elena said, looking slightly happier. "If I have more to work with, um, stylistically, I might have a clearer idea of where to start."

Yuffie took a deep breath. Her fists unclenched. "Right. Yeah. I’ll have him come to Kisaragi House."

"We can have dinner while we wait," Tifa suggested, putting an arm around Yuffie’s shoulder. "I bet you haven’t stopped since you found out." Yuffie nodded, swallowed, scowled ferociously at the floor for a second. She heaved a breath that seemed to push all the frustration out of her face, and within a second or two her expression had settled into something approaching her usual good cheer.

Reno was the last person down the stairs. This time, when he passed the fourth floor, he felt a little less smeared and a little more irritated by the room’s pristine condition. He wondered idly whether Staniv had served other lords before Godo, and whether he’d felt the same grudging irritation when the man he followed was abruptly replaced.

* * *

[Day 4, 1900 Central Standard Time]

Chaos flew high above the ocean, so when the temperature dropped abruptly, the creature did not drop directly into sea. It dropped a hundred meters in a matter of seconds, and then began to beat its wings more strongly to compensate for the sudden change, not moving forward for some minutes as it struggled to regain its previous height.

Dimly, Chaos sensed the mind of the host fluttering beneath its own, struggling to be free of Chaos’ perceptions and to think in his own frame of mind. Chaos allowed it. Turned to face the source of the power it could sense, and remained in place until the host had gained his bearings, understood where they were, where the cold had come from.

Chaos sensed confusion, at its action, at the action its attention had revealed, but Chaos had no words the host would understand. It turned toward the west again and propelled itself forward, rising and falling more dramatically with each beat of its great blood- and bruise-coloured wings in the shock of cold air, and within moments felt the host’s awareness subside, though the power in the south did not.

Chaos roared, and flew faster.


	4. On Swimming in Bronze Boots

[Day 5, 0300 Wutai Standard Time]

Darkness. Silence. Peaceful breathing.

_Beep, beep, beep._

Answering the pager was automatic. Recognising the boss’s number took him a minute, because of all the people he expected to call at – he squinted at the screen with growing dismay, hoping that he was imagining things – quarter-to-three in the goddamn morning, the boss wasn’t it. Reeve remembered things like timezones and currency conversions, and he was pretty polite about waking people up. So Reno groped for his cell, hit the speed-dial, and rolled onto his back, scratching absent fingers through his hair.

The pickup was immediate, and it wasn’t Reeve. When the woman on the other end told him _why_ it wasn’t Reeve, Reno’s hand froze, and his mako-green eyes widened in the darkness.

"Fuck," he said softly, with feeling, and rocketed to his feet. He was talking as he slid the wood and paper door back and slammed his shoulder carelessly into the frame. "We’ll be in the air inside an hour, might be there by sundown. Right. Fuck. Yeah, thanks."

Elena was across the hall from him, Rude was the next door down. Reno rapped on both their doors sharply, already moving down the corridor to where he knew Strife and the rest of AVALANCHE were rooming. They were Turks; they’d be ready by the time he had Strife and Highwind out of bed.

He realised belatedly that he had no idea who exactly was sleeping in which of these rooms and decided pretty immediately that he did not give a fuck. He hammered on a convenient wall.

"YO, STRIFE!"

Immediately around him there were the sounds of angry AVALANCHE members disturbed from slumber: heavy steel dragging from floor to hip or shoulder; Tifa’s soft, sleepy dissent a moment before her feet hit the floor; muttered cursing from both Barret and Cid. The only silent one was the cat, but the dim scarlet glow on the other side of the sliding paper doors was enough to give him away immediately.

Cloud emerged with a certain hairstyle and an expression that told Reno his own hair wasn’t too different at the moment. Blue eyes narrowed. "Problem?" He inquired simply. Reno grinned out of sheer fucking it’s-three-in-the-morning craziness.

"I’m borrowing your pilot and your airship, Strife. Reeve’s been attacked."

Cloud blinked, and echoed Reno’s sentiments. "Fuck."

* * *

[Day 5, 0400 Wutai Standard Time]

Even where land met sea, in the hours before dawn there were few air currents to work with, and Chaos was beginning to struggle. More than twelve hours in the air, first over the frozen north, then cold open ocean, was more than enough to tax its reserves, and that the journey had been undertaken in darkness, with no thermals to offer easy passage, only deepened the creature’s exhaustion.

Even so, it might have made its destination, had not another beast come roaring out of the dark clouds massing in the pre-dawn sky and attracted the attention of the host. Chaos flew far below the metal beast, too small to be noticed by those on board, but the host mind leapt forward, recognition lending it strength. _The Highwind!_ Chaos knew this metal beast that carried the host’s allies; knew, too, the man who tamed it ( _Cid_ ), the woman who fed and groomed it ( _Shera_ ) and with each recognition the host’s mind grew stronger, pushed himself through Chaos’ mind and reached for control of their body with a single bewildered thought:

_They are flying away._

Chaos’ wings folded, thinned, ran away into human skin. Monster and half-formed host plunged, scarlet cloak streaming out behind them, and then only behind him, and Vincent stretched both arms out to break the ocean’s surface before his face.

He trailed bubbles six feet underwater, struggled with weight and a distinct lack of streamlining for desperate seconds as the ocean churned around him. When he broke the surface at last his vision was spotted with black and crazy colour, his limbs heavy with Chaos’ exhaustion. He tread water as best he could for as long as he dared, regaining his breath, regaining his sense of direction, and then struck out toward the distant line of coast that marked northern Wutai.

* * *

[Day 5, 0500 Wutai Standard Time]

Yuffie hadn’t meant to sleep before the Turks had left the house; she’d meant to stay awake until she’d finished with her father’s library, until she’d found out where that crest had come from, but when Reno came crashing through the house like a bright red drunken elephant she’d been folded right forward over her table, forehead on the body of a scroll, drooling on the part she’d been trying to decipher and now probably never would.

Now that she was awake again, even though Tifa had marched her to her room with stern orders to get some real rest I don’t _care_ if you’re the Lady of Wutai, she couldn’t sleep. She lay there for a while in the sticky heat of Wutai’s night, wondering absently if the buzzing in her ears was overtiredness or mosquitoes, and then she rolled to her feet and stepped off the end of her futon onto tatami.

Traded the thin sleeping robe for vest and riotous undershirt, shorts she’d probably die in, so worn they were practically frictionless. The split materia was transferred to her hip pocket automatically. Shoes were likewise an afterthought, thin-soled and tight-laced. Light as a feather, light as her ten thousand cats, light as a shadow to the window and out of it and shimmy-shimmy- _brace_ -flip onto the roof, where she paused.

Listened.

Her home was full of sleeping sounds. There was maybe an hour until the sun poked up over the ocean (or over the ocean if you could see it through the clouds), so that wouldn’t last long, but it was plenty long enough to stretch her legs.

She started off along the roof of Kisaragi House, low to the tiles, wondering idly if her old man’s guards were still on their rounds. Turned out they were, though they seemed a little nervous; no master to guard, she supposed with a shrug and a sidestep into the sakura, slow rolling steps so the branch bent and rebounded as though with the breeze. She toyed with the idea of surprising a few of them into a sparring match, but quickly decided it wasn’t worth her while – if Tifa heard about it, she’d skin Yuffie alive, and Chekhov wouldn’t be too happy with her ei—

Yuffie clenched her fists, clenched her jaw, and moved on.

She had just slithered up the side of the House of Cats when she heard a heavy tread on the bank of the Leviathan, and froze. The steps were not uneven but mechanical, as though the traveller was placing his feet according to some rhythm in his head; they were heavy enough to convince her that this was only the case because the traveller was exhausted. Yuffie settled into the shadows in the lee of the house that was hers, had been her mother’s, and breathed slowly through her nose, eyes half-lidded. They weren’t mako eyes, but eyes stood out, even in darkness, and she didn’t want to be spotted by just anyone.

He was moving slowly, but there was no mistaking the cloak or the dull glint of bronze even in the well-clouded night. Her final hint of confirmation came when he stepped onto the cobbles of the square and his shoes made a dull grinding metallic sound with each slow, measured step. She grinned within her shadow and dropped lightly from the House of Cats, risking long leaps between rocks over the Leviathan to race down the bank and crouch in the shadows, call, " **Fru kuac drana?** " in as fierce a voice as she could muster, even though he’d totally noticed her already, not like she was being careful, and vaulted over the hand rail of the third bridge to land smack bang in the middle of it, right in front of him.

Vincent stared at her, clearly not having heard or seen her coming at all, and said, "Hello, Yuffie," in a voice that was perfectly his own, only with a side of exhaustion and a healthy dash of I Have Just Been Breathing Seawater dressing. Yuffie worried for about half a second and then stomped on it, because if you were worrying about Vincent, the world was coming to an end again, and she’d had enough of that sentiment from the local lords.

"Oh, gawd," she said, clearly disgusted, and grinning like a catfish that got the canary, or however the hell that one went. "It’s you. I thought you were my _awesome_ friend from out of town who sleeps a lot and never returns my phone calls."

Vincent swayed slightly. If it hadn’t been dark and his face hadn’t been plastered with damp hair (What, had he been _swimming?_ Without her?) she might have actually believed she caught the tail end of a tiny deformed baby smile, which might have _really_ convinced her that he was sick. Instead she sashayed forward and punched him in the shoulder in greeting, only instead of greeting what emerged was a strangled sound of indignant disgust, and instead of a punch it was only kind of a damp smoosh with force behind it, because he was _dripping_.

"Grossness, you’re all wet!" Understatement of the century. And he’d swayed again. Her mouth took over, even as she slipped herself under his arm (heard him grunt in surprise and probably disapproval, but screw him and his lack of tactile appreciation) and started hobbling them both dramatically back to Kisaragi House. "Were you in the vampire olympics, Vincent? Did they sign you up for swimming in your clothes, or did you just forget a bathing suit? You probably had to swim in your clothes because your negative tan would blind all your competitors, not to mention turning them into ash which would be hard to filter out of the pool." Vincent gave another sigh that was two parts long-suffering and one part what she swore was a chuckle, and spoke in a way that made her think just setting one foot down in front of the other was taking up all of his concentration. "I am a terrible swimmer."

"I can tell," she told him. "You sound like you drank half the ocean and ate all the sand."

There was no reply to that, possibly because he was even more of a zombie than he usually was, and possibly because he did not want to admit that he had been drowning, which was silly, because at least he didn’t _throw up_ every time he went near the ocean; like there was anything more embarrassing than that.

"The Turks just left," she told him. "A couple of hours ago. Reeve’s in trouble, too, apparently."

She felt Vincent stiffen as they began to ascend the steps toward the large square that connected all of Wutai’s most important monuments, Da Chao aside. "I saw them leave," he confirmed. Yuffie gave him an incredulous look.

"Did you seriously swim here? What happened to Obsydia?" she asked, and felt rather than saw Vincent’s grimace. 

"Chaos," he said shortly. "She will return to Nibelheim."

"Oh," she said, and directed her attention to waving off the guards that had hastened down the steps to meet them.

"Myto Yuffie—"

"Crymm fa—"

"Just help me get his boots off, will ya, I can get him inside by myself," she said, trying vaguely to remember whether there was something improper about removing a man’s boots and pretty sure that there was, but figuring it could go to hell either way. "No need to accompany us, either, but when your shift changes I need one of you to talk to Saac about breakfast and an extra room." Not that Vincent couldn’t just crash in one of the Turks’ rooms, but Yuffie was pretty sure no one wanted to sleep in the same bed Reno’d occupied without a healthy dose of alcohol, and Vincent could be pretty OCD.

The guards made short work of Vincent’s boots and socks and Yuffie marvelled for so long at the fact that Vincent had _feet_ that it was Vincent who muttered a weary, "Syho dryhgc," and left her blinking at him.

"You speak Wutaian?" she asked as she shoved open a door with a clatter and probably woke up half the house again. "Could have mentioned it, Vinnie, think of all the fun we could have had, confusing the hell out of the human smokestack."

"I get by," Vincent said, completely ignoring any suggestion of mischief, and frowning as they turned an unfamiliar corner. "Where...?"

"Somewhere to sleep," Yuffie said, cutting him off. Vincent’s concerns were usually sensible enough that anyone could predict them, and his hangups were about the same, so she kept her answer pragmatic and appropriately lacking in detail. "You oughta take a shower, I guess, but this is Dad’s house, so it’s bath house or nothing, and not to put too fine a point on it, Vinnie, but you’d probably drown. Also turn _red like lobster_ , but you have the claw for it, and red is _probably_ the new black."

She slid back the door to her father’s study and Vincent didn’t move with her when she tried to make him step forward. "C’mon, monster man. Left foot, right foot, just like momma showed you."

"Yuffie," Vincent said, like he was dying a little, only of some sense of propriety and mortification rather than pneumonia, because he was saving that for tomorrow.

"Left foot," Yuffie repeated, bright and expectant, and Vincent sighed the sigh of dead lungs deflating for the last time. He stepped into the room with his left foot, continued without further direction, and that alone was enough to make her congratulate him in a voice high and practically poisonous with sugar. "Atta boy!"

She let go of him near the futon and he sat ungracefully on the floor, stick limbs collapsing like a broken deck chair. (Or just a regular one. She’d never had much luck with deck chairs.) He watched her wordlessly as she pulled out an extra blanket, three towels (he needed them) and rummaged through a sidetable for her father’s sleeping robe. She dumped them all on the floor in front of Vincent, and he stared at them for a few seconds before his gaze drifted upward to her face. He really was exhausted, she thought, if he was that slow about everything. Exhausted and probably cold, which was crazy in this heat, but pretty normal if he’d _swum_ here, and by the sound of things, he had.

"Dry off and change into those," she told him, miming both actions just to be obnoxious. "I’ll go make you some tea." She imitated sipping, both hands cupped around hot steaming nothing. "And maybe some toast or something, I don’t know what Dad eats these days, but if you’re lucky it won’t be natto." She made like she was vomiting – which was one thing she ought to know how to mime, all things considered – and strode out of the room, damp from Vincent’s clothing already becoming warm and uncomfortable along her left side. "Just don’t fall asleep on me before you’ve eaten anything."

* * *

He did not fall asleep, but he made no attempt to don the sleeping robe, either. He towelled his hair until it was no longer clinging to his neck and shoulders, rubbed at his slacks until they were no longer plastered to his skin with moisture, and after a few uncomfortable seconds, shifted his weight from the futon to the tatami. No matter Godo’s absence, no matter his daughter’s permission, no matter that this was the only available room in Kisaragi House...

Yuffie interrupted his thoughts, clattering through the door with little regard for the rest of the manor’s sleeping inhabitants. She took one look at him, and her expression and the snort she gave were more than eloquent enough. She set a tray down on the desk, where the tea and rice she had made for him steamed invitingly, out of his reach.

Then she walked to where he had left Godo’s robe, picked it up, and tossed it at his head. "I’m gonna turn around and give you maybe three minutes to get your wet pants off and get that robe on," she said brightly. "And when I turn around I want you in that bed, or in your underwear. Ready?" She turned smartly to face the silk screen on the wall, one leg out and then snapped back together, like a Shinra soldier. "Go!"

Vincent stared at her for long enough that she began counting the seconds aloud, and that was enough to convince him that she was perfectly serious. He did not scrabble; he was too tired for that. Nevertheless, he was glad that his fingers had been trained to deftness even when numb and bone tired, particularly when Yuffie began to count down his final thirty seconds and he was still on his knees attempting to tie the robe closed with something approaching neatness. She spun around mere seconds after he had arranged his limbs beneath Godo’s blankets, and she grinned at him.

"For the best, I guess," she said as she slipped back to the desk, tray tilting in her hands with calculated clumsiness. "I mean, Cait’s not even around to help me with the blackmail, and we’ve really got enough photos to be going on with."

She set the tray down next to him and plopped herself down on the floor, cross-legged and leaning back on her hands.

"So, when you die of pneumonia, can I have your shoes?"

Vincent tried to ignore the vast difference between the temperature of his skin and the temperature of his tea. "They wouldn’t fit you," he said, and sipped. He shivered at the feeling of warmth spreading through his cold flesh in squirming threads, a response that Yuffie obligingly ignored. He was grateful.

With warmth and sustenance came, simultaneously, a feeling of great drowsiness and recollection of his reason for being here in the first place. He moved from the tea to the rice, and glanced at Yuffie expectantly, marginally more alert and intending to make use of it. Yuffie tilted her head further back for a few seconds, then flung her torso forward and rested her elbows on her knees, chin on the heel of one hand.

"Dead: Gorky, Shake, Chekhov. Missing: Staniv, Godo. Hurt: Reeve. There’s an unidentifiable mon on the top floor of the pagoda, which Elena thinks she’s seen before. We have photos of the pagoda as it was before cleanup, and—" She rummaged briefly in her pocket. "—I have one broken materia." She held up the two distinct halves of what had once been a mastered Leviathan, and let her hands drop, clearly sick of the entire situation. "You can take a look after you get some rest. Like I said, the Turks only left a little while ago, so we don’t have any information about Reeve just yet."

Vincent nodded. It seemed unlikely that Reeve’s situation was unrelated, but any information they had to relay would be twelve hours away at best. As long as he rested, and examined what information was available to them in Wutai before they received new information, Vincent would not be holding them back, although he might be giving them more to worry about. He set aside his bowl, and Yuffie stretched impossibly to retrieve the tray.

"Wake me when Cloud arises," he said. Yuffie raised her eyebrows at him, and he added, "All is not well."

"Weren’t you going to call if that happened?"

Vincent gave her a rare, wry smile, felt the insidious drowsiness deepen.

"My apologies. The demons had other ideas."


	5. Old Wars

[Day 5, 0900 Wutai Standard Time]

When Tifa slid back Yuffie’s door just enough to peek inside, the first thing she saw was crimson on tatami, and so the rest of the door was slid back with more force than she’d originally intended. The door hit the far end of its frame with a sharp _crack_ , and by the time she realised that the scarlet puddle was a cloak, not a bloodstain, both of the room’s occupants were awake enough to focus on her; Yuffie in the corner of the room already on her feet, and Vincent bolt upright on the futon, apparently halfway through the realisation that he had no gun immediately on hand.

" _Omni_ , I thought—sorry to wake you both," she said, immediately contrite. "I saw the red, and..." She banished the thought with a wave of one hand, her muscles aching slightly from the speed with which she had clenched her fists. "I made breakfast. I wanted to know if you were awake. When did you get in, Vincent?"

Yuffie stretched both arms high over her head, yawning widely and arching from one side to the other. "About half an hour before sun-up," she said, before Vincent could speak. "What kinda breakfast, Teef? I’m starving."

"Shortly after five this morning." Vincent’s confirmation was sedate despite his disarrayed and slightly groggy appearance. He sounded as if something had been chewing on his vocal chords. Tifa hid a smile. He had not been so sleep-fuddled the first time they met, or very often afterward, but the sight always amused her. Vincent carried himself with such gravity that any crack in his professionalism was an instant source of entertainment. "Is Cloud awake?"

"He’s up," she grinned. "He’s not awake yet. He might be, by the time we’re done eating." She took a step backward, hand on the door, smiling as Yuffie bounced out of her stretch and made to follow. "Get some clothes on and come out when you’re ready," she said to Vincent, and Yuffie spun on her heel.

"Your chance to dress like an emperor, Vinnie," she said. "Your stuff is all wet—" ("No thanks to your leaving it on the floor," Vincent muttered.) "—so grab whatever you want. Dad won’t mind." And so saying, she pulled Tifa out into the hall, and gave the older woman an expression of calculated innocence. "What?"

"You could have hung them up, Yuffie," Tifa scolded, without much vehemence. Yuffie scoffed.

"They wouldn’t be dry even if I had," she said. "You should’ve seen him when he got here, Teef, he was half drowned. He _swam_ here."

Tifa stopped, stared at the younger girl. "He did what?" Her surprise morphed swiftly into concern. That long in the ocean... She started back toward the room. "You got something warm into him, right? And he had plenty of blankets? Did he take a sho—" But Yuffie was tugging her into motion again, brushing her concerns aside with small skipping steps and brusque flicking motions of her hands.

"All taken care of, except the shower part. He looked ready to collapse, so I wasn’t gonna put him in the bath house." She jumped onto the handrail as they passed through an open section of the manor. "He’s lookin’ much better already, and he can’t have slept more than four hours, so he’s probably fine. Said he wanted to speak to Cloud straight away, though."

Tifa’s brow furrowed, and her teeth worried briefly at her lower lip. "Do you know where he was?" Yuffie shook her head. "Something must have gone wrong." The ninja shrugged, and jumped down from the railing as they reached the rooms Godo typically dined in.

"If he hadn’t been about to fall over, he’d probably have woken you all up. He’ll get to it. Probably over breakfast." Yuffie made a face as she slid the door aside. "He’s really gotta work on his sense of timing."

Cloud was already sitting at the low table, expression pained, spikes sadly drooping. "Why doesn’t your father have coffee?" he rasped at Yuffie, and she stepped up behind him and ruffled his whole head viciously with both hands, while he squawked and groaned in protest.

"None of your poison for Wutai, foreign dog!" she said, entirely too loudly for Cloud, who ducked his head, cringing. "Here we drink the drink of _true_ invigoration: hot leaf juice!"

Cloud groaned, and swilled his cup without enthusiasm. "You can keep it," he said. "Not enough caffeine for me."

"Well, no," Yuffie agreed, plopping down beside him and stealing his toast. "But it does smell pretty. Vincent arrived, by the way."

That distracted Cloud enough that he didn’t bother trying to get his toast back, and so Tifa started dicing bacon and mushroom as the wok reheated and Yuffie answered Cloud’s questions as best she could. Kisaragi House’s kitchen seemed to be one place that Shinra technology had never touched: the ‘stove’ was a firepit, if firepit it could be called, being raised and set so that a pot could be set at the height of the benchtop. It wasn’t what she was used to, but the kitchen had a lived-in feel to it that was comforting, and she was quickly getting used to it – although how long they would be staying here was anyone’s guess.

Vincent entered just as she added the egg, looking far more alert than he had in Godo’s bedroom. He had traded the white sleeping robe for a plain robe, dark blue struck through with black and gold thread, and what was probably the most sober obi in Godo’s wardrobe. It was bizarre to see him without his signature cloak, especially with the claw sticking out one sleeve like a piece of armour he’d forgotten to remove, but Tifa thought the look almost suited him.

Yuffie, sitting on the floor, broke into applause; with her mouth still full of Cloud’s toast, she could do little else without spitting everywhere or choking. Vincent studiously ignored her, choosing instead to nod in greeting to Cloud, who was plainly struggling to disguise a grin of his own.

"Morning, Vincent. Yuffie says you swam here?"

Vincent nodded shortly. He did not sit down, but stood at one end of the table with his arms folded, head slightly bowed. "Not far. Chaos carried me the greater distance from the Crater, but I fear we must return there."

Tifa glanced up from scooping omelette onto a plate, and Cloud’s gaze sharpened abruptly. "The Crater? What were you doing there?"

Vincent did not answer for just long enough that his hesitation was marked, by all three of them. His voice was carefully neutral. "I had sensed something in the north, something in which the demons seemed to take great interest. This was why I could not attend... to you all," he finished, awkwardly. Tifa wondered if he was referring to Godo’s disappearance specifically, or to their reunion in Kalm as well, and her throat tightened. She set the plates on the table, in front of Yuffie and at the end near Vincent, and sat back on her knees to listen to the rest. "I reached the Crater yesterday."

Tense silence. Yuffie smacked her palm into the table, making Tifa jump. "And _what_ , Vincent, gawd, this isn’t some kind of dramatic reading." Tifa resisted the urge to kick her under the table. But Vincent was not really paying attention to any of them; his gaze was distant, angled between his feet and the edge of the table, and his brow was furrowed as he considered. Tifa’s fists clenched slowly on the table as she watched him, and she understood some of Yuffie’s impatience: Vincent’s impressions of the world and the information he was willing to surrender to the rest of them were often worlds apart, and watching him try to knit the two together was very often an exercise in frustration.

"There was nothing visible. The area was silent, but for the wind. Yet... the demons were agitated. They grew moreso as I approached the centre of the crater." He shook his head, a minute motion of frustration and confusion. "The area was so covered in mist that I could hardly see, and when it lifted for a moment, Chaos bore me away. Toward Wutai. But for the moment that I could see the crater clearly, I am certain that I saw... crystal. Black crystal."

His red eyes flickered up, locked onto Cloud’s face.

"Like that in which Sephiroth was once encased."

Tifa opened her mouth to say, that wasn’t black, but no words came out. Cloud’s jaw had tightened, the tendons standing out in his neck, and his hands were pressed flat into the tabletop, fingers blotched from the pressure he was exerting. Yuffie was gaping, pupils like huge clouded marbles, whites visible all around the edges of her eyes.

"Black materia," she said. "You’re saying there’s a giant chunk of _black materia_ up there."

Vincent hesitated again. He made an awkward half-shrugging motion with his shoulders.

"I cannot say for certain. However, that is what it looked like."

Cloud sat back, rubbed his hands over his face briskly.

"Right," he said, and his voice was no longer muffled with sleep. "Breakfast first. Vincent, take a look at the pagoda while you’re here, but we need to get back to that crater. Yuffie, we need a pair of chocobos."

That was enough to shake Tifa from her silence. " _Three_ chocobos," she corrected, glaring at Cloud when he looked apt to protest. "And—"

"Like hell," Yuffie said. "Like hell I am not coming with you. Vincent, hit the pagoda and then come to the weapons shop so I can show you the photos Shuichi took." She stood, and glared down at them all. "I’ll be with the council. It might take all afternoon, but we’ll have a goddamn _flotilla_ of chocobos by morning."

She slammed out of the door like it had done her a personal wrong, and despite the thousand other things that must have been racing through his head, Cloud looked at Tifa with a tiny smile and a little bewilderment. "She has a council, now?"

"She has grown," Vincent said, and sat down. Whether his statement was a response to Cloud’s question, or merely a vocalisation of his own interior musing, though, Tifa couldn’t say.

* * *

[Day 5, 1530 Midgar Standard Time]

Reeve’s doctor met them in the lobby of the long, low-slung building that was serving as the combination Science/Medical Department. There was a mechanical cat at her heels. Cait Sith should not, technically speaking, have been capable of worry, but Reeve was not a master engineer for nothing – the cat’s crown was crooked on his head, the angle of it no longer jaunty, and the way his tail twitched back and forth spoke volumes about his agitation. His ears perked up when he saw the Turks, however, and he skittered forward to greet them.

"Thought you’d never get here," he called, voice cheerfully abrasive despite his previous ill-humour. Reeve had programmed that a little too well, in Reno’s opinion. "We were startin’ t’ wonder ‘f you’d been clobbered as well. Come through, come through, he’s in a bad way."

Reno nodded to the doctor. She was maybe forty-five, with square-rimmed spectacles and pale blue eyes that gave her face a severity to match her mechanically wavy hair. It cut off just above her collar and a necklace with two round dull jewels that looked something like rubies might if they had the flu. The collar and accompanying labcoat were laboriously starched and ironed, and clean like she’d gotten dressed five minutes ago, which always tended to make Reno think these people just weren’t working hard enough. He’d never understand how they managed to stay so neat. (His own clothes were perpetually rumpled; this was how you could tell he earned his hazard pay.)

"How’s he going, doc?"

"Not well." Ayuki’s thin lips flattened further as she led them down a long corridor and into her office. "You can see for yourself, but I must ask that you not enter the room. It’s being kept at a specific temperature, and even opening the door could be a shock his system doesn’t need."

The room in question was connected to her office and personal lab – a small, sealed room with a dozen monitors and a gurney that might have belonged in a morgue as easily as a hospital. Cait Sith leapt onto a stool by the observation window, clearly placed here for this very purpose, and pressed his face and front paws against the glass like an eager child at the zoo. Almost immediately, his ears drooped. Reeve was visible through the glass, his beard no longer so well-defined with the additional growth of a day or two on his cheeks. There were tubes in him, emerging from his nose and protruding from the back of his visible hand, like the quills of a porcupine. Elena made a miserable sound next to him, but Reno scowled at the vision through the glass.

"Any word on what happened to him? Security footage?" Reno prompted, and Ayuki shook her head.

"We have one witness, his last appointment that evening, who will be reporting shortly. Whoever it was took out all the cameras in that building. Set them on an infinite loop, as I understand it." Reno grimaced. The rest of the building would’ve looked normal on a loop at that time of night, but he’d love to find out which morons were watching Reeve on a loop for all hours without realising there was a problem. Were the Turks the only ones who busted in and told him to get some goddamn sleep? Probably. Reno made a small sound of disgust.

"I’ll go meet this witness. Ayuki, tell Elena about his condition. Wounds sustained. What’s wrong with him. If we’re lucky, it’ll give us a weapon of choice." He turned for the door, shook his head when Rude twitched one eyebrow. He didn’t need backup. He heard a telltale jingle as the cat came skittering after. "She’ll be reportin’ t’ me," Cait said in explanation. "She’ll know you, o’ course, but y’ hardly want t’ miss each other, do y’?"

They were halfway down the hall when Cait tugged impatiently at his slacks, and Reno hauled him onto one hip, letting him sort out his own way to the Turk’s shoulder.Once settled, Cait bent as best he could, to mutter conspiratorially, "I dinna like her. The doctor woman," he clarified. "Gives me the heebie jeebies."

"She probably likes her life a little quieter," Reno said dryly, but he agreed. He didn’t like the woman’s cold, calculating eyes. He’d been on the wrong end of guns belonging to people with eyes like that, and they did not induce comfort. "Who am I looking for?"

"Lieutenant Meltzer," the cat said. "Canna miss her. More important, where’s the rest o’ y’?"

Reno glanced at the robot’s face. "Out front. Security restrictions. Why d’you ask?"

"I dinna want to mention anythin’ t’ _her_ ," Cait explained. "But the boss set all we Sith units t’ track access t’ his system, in case o’ theft and suchlike, and Ayuki dinna mention it, but his computer was hit, too." Feline eyes gleamed yellow-green in the corner of Reno’s vision. "If y’ can get me a wee bit o’ technical assistance, I might be able t’ extract some information as t’ what they were after."

Reno reached into a pocket and flipped the cat his cell. "Let Highwind know you need him, and meet him at the boom gate. Security won’t let them through without you."

Cait chuckled. "W’nae they just love that?"

* * *

[Day 5, 1600 Midgar Standard Time]

Meltzer was, indeed, pretty hard to miss. If the red uniform in a lobby full of suits wasn’t enough, the hair – a cavity-inducing pink – was a dead give-away, and if _that_ wasn’t enough, she was tall enough that she’d spotted him the second he walked in the door. Her walk was brisk and businesslike, and when she saluted, angled and timed to perfection, Reno turned a chuckle into a cough.

"That hair regulation, too, Meltzer?" he asked. Aside from the colour, it was longer than most soldiers’, finishing up around her shoulder blades. The front wings were braided with some kind of leather, providing a bright frame for a coffee coloured face. Her eyes were pink, too. Reno hoped to hell they were contacts; he didn’t want to think what her parents had been drinking if they weren’t.

"Not sure you’re one to be talking about regulations, sir," she said smartly, contralto with the slightest hint of a rasp, completely devoid of humour in a way that told him she’d been innocently taking the piss out of instructors for years. Reno grinned, straightened his jacket with an overdramatic flourish, adjusted his goggles, and indicated she should walk with him.

"My regulations depend on the job at hand," he said as she fell into step beside him. Reno, automatically measuring her against his partner’s height, came to the conclusion that in comparison to Rude, she was still pretty damn tall. "President Tuesti’s had you out on assist and defend, am I right?"

"That’s right, sir. A and D in Sector Three, clearing the area and setting up housing blocks." She stepped behind him as he flashed ID at a pair of guards in the hall of offices dedicated to administration. "And if we’re not going to get down to business, sir, I’d rather get back to my squad."

Reno spun on his heel, fast enough that her step faltered cautiously, but he continued moving – backward – down the corridor. "Work with me, Meltzer, I don’t like to dive right in," he said, all good-natured appeal, and her expression quickly morphed into one of skepticism.

"Forgive my haste, sir," she said, disapproval plain. "We lost two presidents last year, and I was counting on keeping this one for a while. If you’re not ready to dive in just yet, then I’d rather be dismissed so I can get some work done." That had been what he was waiting for. Reno grinned, slowed, and turned just in time to set his hand on the door to Reeve’s office. "Well, you were his last appointment," he said. "So why don’t you tell me how that went, while I take a look at this office." He opened the door, and stopped. Meltzer’s voice from behind him was wry.

"I’ll tell you all you want, but first let me tell you how the office was this morning, before Ayuki had it tidied."

* * *

"So in layman’s terms, it’s shock." Elena furrowed her brow and looked very puzzled and sincere, and very pointedly did not look like she was seething. "And you think whoever attacked him used some kind of materia?"

"He’s exhibiting all the signs typically associated with heavy Ice damage," Ayuki repeated, not quite impatiently. "We’re raising his body temperature half a degree at a time."

"Oh!" Elena said, with all the excitement she could muster. "Like for frostbite?" Ayuki nodded, seemingly relieved, and glanced at her watch.

"I’ll have to leave you with those, I’m afraid," she said, gesturing to the photocopied notes on Elena’s lap, and her expression softened, though her eyes did not. "Time to move some of his tubes around."

Elena jumped to her feet, lost the papers, made a small sound of distress and embarrassment, and crouched to start scooping them together. "We’ll get out of your way," she said when she’d mashed them into some kind of order. A glance over her shoulder at Rude’s deadpan expression told her she was doing a fantastic job. "And let Reno know the details. Call us if anything changes, won’t you?" That hint of concern in her voice, at least, was sincere; Reeve was one of the few men in her life who appreciated her talent with a keyboard, and she kind of wanted to keep it that way.

She stepped left when she left the ward, laughed high, false laughter when Rude emerged and said, "Elena..." as though she were going crazy, and as soon as she was sure they were out of Ayuki’s sight and hearing, she stuffed the ‘medical report’ in the nearest trash can. Rude’s silence trailed along behind her, patient and mildly curious, and she turned around to face him with her teeth clenched, the muscles in her neck knotted with rage.

"Bullshit," she said. "One hundred per cent bullshit, from the opening diagnosis. They’d already be up to at least fifteen degrees in that room if he was rigged up by eleven, and did you _touch_ the glass in there? It was _freezing_." She stormed a few steps away from him, and then back again, frustrated and with nothing to punch. "What, is she trying to keep him in _stasis?_ "

Rude was silent, but it was a comiserative silence, and a silence that didn’t buy into the dumb blond act she’d been putting on for the doctor. The fury drained on out of her and left her wanting a coffee and a good long nap. "I know." She shouldn’t let it get to her. Rude started walking, and she followed, checking her pager; the low priority message that had vibrated at her hip halfway through Ayuki’s explanation still marqueed across the screen.

_BOSS MAN’S OFFICE._

She hoped Reno was having more luck than they were.

* * *

"Apparently she assumed we had security footage," Meltzer explained. "Security was pretty light at the time. Our more experienced squads were working the festival, so they’ve had days in lieu." She looked disgruntled. "It was my fault. I left the rookies with Ayuki while I went to check security, and by the time I called back to say the cameras had been tampered with..." Lana shook her head and fell silent, jaw clenched. Reno took up the slack.

"The computer was hit. So were the bookshelves, his filing cabinet, and both the safes," he said, and Elena crossed immediately to the desk, hands rising to Reeve’s computer. "It won’t turn on."

Elena grunted a little as she forced her nails, and then her fingertips under the plastic cover, and the entire front came away with a snap. She knelt, dark eyes intent on the innards, and after a second she made a soft sound that might have been amusement or derision. "That would be because the hard drive’s missing," she said, pushing herself back to her feet. "So they were after information that only the president has access to."

"And if they got into that safe, there’s a high chance they or their source is inside the organisation," Reno continued. Rude shifted slightly, just enough to call Reno’s attention to him, and Reno shrugged. "The cat’s checking on system access. If they got anything off the server, we might have an idea of what they’re looking for and why they want the president."

Elena nodded absently. "Security is better than it used to be," she mused. "I don’t think there’s a way to break into that system without him. He developed most of it himself, and it’s not like it was. If you wanted to know..." She trailed off, eyes far away, flickering wildly for a few seconds, and then she slammed both her hands into the desk. " _That’s it!_ "

"What’s it?" Reno demanded, bewildered, and as Elena opened her mouth, another voice spoke over the top of them both.

"Yes, dear," said Ayuki. "Do tell."


	6. The Imbued

[Day 5, 1630 Midgar Standard Time]

"Don’t know why we gotta—" A yowl.

"Ach! That was my _tail_."

"You the one who said we weren’t gonna need another torch," Barret responded, in a slightly softer rumble that was most likely apology. "If it ain’t lit up, I’m gonna step on it."

Nanaki huffed a sigh, and lifted his flame-tipped tail slightly higher. Undignified as the motion was, it was better than listening to the others gripe about the dimly lit warehouse. "Everything is covered in dust," he said with faint disapproval. "Have you any idea where it is?"

"Sure an’ I can find it," Cait Sith asserted cheerfully. "It just might take a wee while."

The warehouse was on the outskirts of the Neo-Shinra complex, and part of a grid of identical warehouses that contained, as far as Nanaki could tell, anything salvagable from the ruins of the Shinra building. That project had been abandoned as soon as Reeve had come properly to power, but Shinra employees had certainly done an admirable job in the confused weeks immediately following Meteor: everything from computer systems to old newspapers to scaled models of doomed future projects of the Shinra Company lay mouldering in the darkened warehouse, as the fluorescent lighting above them hummed and flickered slowly and reluctantly to life. They would probably have left the building before the lights kicked in, Nanaki thought derisively, with a thoughtless lash of his tail, and he ducked his head apologetically as both Barret and Cait Sith squawked and backpedalled sharply to avoid the flame.

"If ye can pick up a trace of it, now’s the time to follow yer nose," the robot suggested brightly, and Nanaki snorted, resisting the human habit to roll his eye. "I smell nothing in this warehouse but dust," he pronounced, moving carefully past stacks of newspaper. "And chocobo," he added, frowning and inhaling again, short puffs of breath that, held and sifted through, could only confirm the ridiculous scent: chocobo.

"Follow that," Cid suggested, clearly about as happy with their surroundings as Nanaki was. "The only thing in here that’s seen so much as a chocobo feather is that moogle."

"Surely not this recently," Nanaki muttered, but led the way – the pilot’s reasoning was sound enough to give him hope that they need not spend the evening unearthing Cait Sith’s better (quieter) half, and as fond as Nanaki was of libraries and artifacts (and Yuffie and Reeve), Shinra was Shinra, and dust was dust. Neither was pleasant. Not for long periods of time, and perhaps especially not in the dark.

The scent was more widespread, and therefore less conclusive, than any of them had hoped it would be, but a lucky glance shortly after the scent petered out revealed a rotund pale shape in the darkness that could only be the mechanical moogle that had borne Cait Sith for the vast majority of their adventures. Cid dropped down in the dust beside it, running his fingers along the fur for the hatch that would open on the moogle’s innards, and ignoring Cait Sith’s lewd commentary on the subject. From the look on Cid’s face, the going was not going to be pretty.

"It’s running," he allowed. "But it sure as hell ain’t going anywhere. Cat, you’d better turn your eyes on and get in here so’s I can see what I’m doing before I jump-start the sucker."

"Dinna fry the poor wee thing," Cait whined plaintively, and after a moment, his bright yellow eyes became even brighter.

Nanaki lowered his tail with no small amount of relief; quite apart from being undignified, such a posture was unnatural for long periods of time, and quite uncomfortable. He sat on his haunches, ears flicked back to listen to Cid softly cursing Reeve and his intricate, tightly-packed systems. It was only when Barret shifted, first from one foot, then back to it, that he realised how uneasy the man was. When he asked, Barret shook his head briefly, jaw clenched. Nanaki waited.

"Don’t like it," Barret said eventually, by way of conversation. "Why’s the power takin’ so long to kick in? Thought Reeve had some kinda new system." Nanaki huffed a long breath, not quite in laughter, and curled his tail neatly about his forepaws.

"As I hear it, most of Neo-Shinra’s resources are deployed outside the company," he said. "Reeve probably did not feel these warehouses were worth bothering with, since the company’s past is not of any particular use."

There was a shift in the air, and soft laughter from over their heads.

"Only to some," said the darkness.

* * *

[Day 5, 1630 Midgar Standard Time]

The Turks had a secret and that secret was: Elena’s poker face was getting better. Reno would never say so, and Rude would never mention something so frivolous, anyway, but Elena knew it, and when Ayuki came in the door, she was glad she’d capitalised on her rookie reputation when she’d introduced herself to the good doctor – it made it that much easier to hide the distrust in her eyes, when Ayuki was expecting to encounter an open book.

"Oh, it reminded me of a case from a couple of months ago," she said, blithely as she could manage. "We had to put it down, but I think I have an idea, if we get back to it." Out of the corner of one eye, she could see Reno’s expression – it wasn’t changing, but there was a glimmer of understanding in his eyes: Elena had something, and she wasn’t giving it up to Ayuki. Not after a cleanup as meticulous as this.

The doctor frowned. "I would think you would be a little more focused on the job at hand," she said reprovingly, patting the clipboard she still carried against the side of her leg. "But no matter. Look who’s up and about." She stepped aside, pressing against the doorframe and holding open the door for her companion. Elena’s bright, bubble-brained façade shattered like a dropped mirror as Reeve stepped carefully through the doorway, pale and distant like he wasn’t quite awake, and a cry of numb horror emerged from her throat in protest.

"Wh-what do you think you’re _doing_ ," she managed. "Look at him, he can hardly _stand_ —here, Mr President—" and she hurried around the desk, but Rude was already moving toward the doorway, extending an arm toward Reeve like a chauffer instead of a human walking frame. Pale and weary as Reeve appeared, he was completely unprepared for the president to take that arm, lift it to shoulder height, and drive his other hand into Rude’s solar plexus.

The bald Turk made a soft gagging sound and doubled over, tried to stagger back, but Reeve’s hand on his arm was vice-like in its grip. He landed two more solid hits before Lana lunged forward to grab Reeve and immobilise his arms, and Rude finally wrenched himself backward, glasses half-hanging off his face, mouth wide open as he struggled for breath. Elena was halfway to Rude’s side, staring open-mouthed as Reno struggled with the president, when she noticed Ayuki’s narrow smile.

Ayuki raised one hand, and the necklace at her throat flared to life, dull stones pulsing a sickly, shining red. Elena thought, _materia_ , grabbed Rude by the arm, and leapt backward. Ice exploded out of the floor where they’d just been standing, a large, jagged formation that would have immobilised them both, had they been caught in it—and just as she thought that, it shattered explosively, sending sharp fragments in every direction, including theirs. Ice didn’t do that.

Something did; it was out at the edge of her consciousness – she’d think about it later.

"Meltzer, move!" Reno, pistol out in favour of the nightstick, trained on Ayuki for all that Lana still grappled with the president in his line of fire. Lana snarled, braced herself to wrench them both backward, and made a choking sound instead, eyes wide. Elena could only gape as ice spires errupted from Lana’s shoulders, flesh-coloured fluid in the cracks; Lana shoved herself backward with a hoarse cry of pain, blood already coursing down her bare stomach. Reeve steadied himself, face still and pale, and the icicles that had shot out of his back sank back into his shoulders, reverse-growth on some kind of arctic human porcupine. As Reno swore and moved to cover Lana, Reeve turned creakily toward the remaining Turks, and raised both hands in time with Ayuki.

Rude stood, too slowly, and the doctor’s triumphant bark of laughter was drowned out by the report of Reno’s pistol and the sharp, cracking growth of icy stalagmites in circle around the bald Turk, tight enough to arrest all movement. Elena jerked her foot back, scrambling for cover behind Reeve’s desk, eyes fixed on Rude as he struggled to free himself from the icy prison. She heard the sound of ice shattering, heard Reno swear explosively again, and her gun was in her hands; she sighted under the backboard of Reeve’s desk and put a bullet through the president’s ankle.

Reeve’s left ankle shattered as the bullet passed through it, and Ayuki let out a short scream as it hit her mid-calf instead. Reeve, off-balance, toppled neatly to the floor and shattered in a million glittering pieces of ice. Elena was too shocked at the sight of her president disintegrating to note until those few crucial seconds had passed that Ayuki had staggered backward, staggered away. She pushed herself to her feet, glock out in front of her, and Reno got to his feet, looking grim. There was a streak of blood down the side of his face that nearly matched the swooping scarlet tattoo on each cheek.

"Let her go," he said, even as Elena moved to the door, scuffing with slow, careful horror through the remnants of ‘Reeve’. She peered carefully around the doorframe and gaped at the empty hallway. Ayuki hadn’t even left any blood, past a few feet from the door.

"I’ll have to. She’s gone." She turned back to the office, stared at the ice on the floor, even as Rude managed to crack the top half off one of the icicles that made up his prison. "I am so fired," she whispered, and sank back against the doorframe, trying not to shake too much with adrenaline or laughter while she struggled to holster her gun.

Reno muttered under his breath, Nightstick out and glowing with a mid-level Restore, and Lana sat up, pale and furious beneath her skin tone.

"Never liked that bitch," she said. There was a blood between the cracks in her teeth; when she ran her tongue over them, she only thickened the colour. Reno left her there, breathing but not quite ready to stand yet, and then went over to give Rude a hand in smashing through the remaining icicles. From the sound of things, he hurt his hands more than the stalagmites, but after a few minutes of dedicated swearing, the bald Turk was free, and Reno grinned at the room, flexing his skinny, quick-fingered hands.

"Well, that narrows down our options," he said. "I’ll get onto the cat and make sure they’re prepped. I doubt Ayuki’ll go after them in her condition, but better safe than sorry."

He stepped over the debris to stand by the window, one finger already in his ear to block out any external conversation. Lana hauled herself to her feet and started prodding at Reeve’s remnants, pale eyes intent. Elena watched her retrieve a piece of ice and rub it carefully between her fingers until it melted enough to slip out from between them.

She did not quite jump when Rude appeared at her side, but it was a close thing. When she looked up, she could just see his eyes through the dark glasses, intent upon her face.

"Nice shot," he said at last.

"Lucky shot," she corrected, but she smiled, and that was that.

* * *

[Day 5, 1700 Midgar Standard Time]

"Only to some."

Barret whirled toward the voice, gun-arm already raised. Nanaki was on his feet again in an instant, tail lashing, pupil flared wide to make use of all available light. The scent of chocobo was back, stronger than ever, and he could smell-- open plains, the wind rolling in off the wasteland, cold and fresh like at the canyon. But that was absurd; this warehouse could have very little ventilation...

"Careful," he murmured to Barret. "There’s wind magic at work."

"Ooh, very good," the same voice cooed. Soft and sweet and feminine, and not where it had been ten seconds ago. "Give the kitten a treat." Nanaki didn’t turn as the voice moved. He’d heard it this time—the barest rustle of cloth in the air above them. The change in the air was as good as confirmation.

"She’s on the shelves," he growled, and whirled as the voice tittered from far closer at hand.

"Am I?" she asked. She was small and fair and dressed – though Nanaki’s opinion on such matters rarely varied – ridiculously. A white and gold leotard, heavily sequinned and trimmed with large, curling feathers – that explained the scent, Nanaki supposed. It did not explain what she was doing here, or how she had come to be perched with such cheerful precariousness on the edge of a shipping container, ten feet above Cid’s head.

Barret levelled his gun-arm at her while the pilot scooted carefully backward. "What the hell do you want?" he snarled, better than Nanaki could have, but the girl only smiled, vacuous and sweet, and laughed softly at their anger.

"Aww, don’t get your dander up," she soothed, one foot bouncing to some bright interior rhythm, every inch a showgirl. "All I want is for y’all to give me one _hundred_ per cent of your attention." Nanaki’s upper lip curled back over his fangs as she smiled, bright and crystalline, and extended one hand, palm down. Several things happened at once.

Cait Sith yowled and leapt backward.

The girl slid from the edge of the shipping container and dropped, lightly, lightly—

—and there was a deafening clap of sound as she touched down on the crown of the moogle’s head, and the entire mog became, abruptly, moogle pancake.

Her smile took on a devious cast as they gaped.

"Now that I have your attention," she said, no longer coy. "AVALANCHE’s involvement is not necessary here. Stay out of our way. This will be your only warning." Before Barret’s teeth had time to grit, she tipped them a wink and a flourish. "This has been the Chocobo-Imbued. Y’all have a nice day."

And as swiftly as she had come, she vanished again, a rush of displaced air the only sign of her passage.

Cait was the first to recover, turning his crown over and over in his paws as he approached the flattened moogle. A few prods seemed to confirm that the thing was completely destroyed, and he settled the crown over the spot that would have housed his heart, had he been a creature of flesh and blood. Cait Sith had not been built for gravity, but there was a forlorn angle to his ears and even the fibreoptic whiskers as he said, as seriously as his voice would allow, "Th’ mog is dead."

Nanaki was sure there was no more succinct method of expression than Cid’s, "—the @#$% was _that?_ "

* * *

[Day 5, 1130 Wutai Standard Time]

The shrill tone of the PHS was a welcome distraction, and Cloud lunged for it before the first tone had died. "Strife."

" _Spike._ " Cid’s voice was terse. Cloud righted himself carefully, eyes already narrowing, anticipating the severity of the pilot’s tidings. " _I got some good news, and some bad news._ "

"Bad news first," Cloud said automatically, and was peripherally aware of Tifa’s attention being drawn sharply in his direction. He raised a quelling hand to curtail questions as Cid chuckled darkly, and set the PHS to speakerphone. Cid’s voice crackled across the table, and Tifa leaned forward, wine-dark eyes intent.

" _Don’t know why I ask. Okay, the bad news is, Reeve’s not just hurt, he’s kidnapped. There was some kind of dummy up there in the med bay – Turks seem to think it was made of ice or something._ "

"The dummy was?" Cloud frowned. "But how would that have fooled any—"

" _Hold yer chocobos, Spike, I’m gettin’ there._ " A pause, just long enough to permit a drag on a cigarette. Tifa made a sound of mixed disgust and worry, and Cloud echoed her sentiments – at Shera’s behest, Cid had more or less quit the cancer sticks. If he was smoking again, he was stressed. " _Apparently the doctor attacked them, with the ice puppet. Seems like she had control over the whole thing. Anyway, Elena reckons she’s got a lead – we’re here with her and the cat, hell knows where the other three got off to—_ "

_Three?_ Tifa mouthed to Cloud, and he shrugged back. _Turks?_

"— _anyway, we had a little encounter ourselves in the warehouses. Red says they’re in the same group, but the girl who came for us, uh, didn’t look like she belonged to Shinra so much as a circus._ " Another long drag. " _Called herself the Chocobo-Imbued. She flattened the mog. I mean that._ "

Silence. Tifa shifted slightly closer, already gnawing at her lips. "So what was your good news?" she asked, hopeful as ever. Cid’s voice, when it came, sounded slightly embarrassed.

" _Actually, that was the, uh, lead. The Turk reckons these people were after Reeve for information, and they took out the Shinra systems to stop anyone following their tracks. What they didn’t know was—_ "

Scuffling. Elena’s voice, getting closer. "— _let me, would you? Strife? I’m working from my old system, we picked it up from my folks. They’re pretty beat up, they were on the plate when, you know, Meteor, but I think I can get them working again._ "

Cloud and Tifa looked at each other. Tifa gave him a helpless look. It seemed that, like Reeve, Elena often skipped a few essential steps in her explanations. "That’s... good, Elena," Cloud said. "Why?"

" _That mark in the pagoda?_ " Elena asked, slowly and deliberately, like she was leading them painstakingly along a very simple train of thought. " _It’s definitely from the Shinra servers. You’re just lucky I’d seen it before. They’ve basically cut off all Neo-Shinra access by taking out the president, but what they didn’t know was that I hacked the servers before I was signed up – and I still have temp files in these babies._ " There was a dull metallic thump in the background as Elena brought her palm down on one of the servers with great affection. " _With Cait’s processor and logic engine, I oughta have some kind of answer for us within a day or two._ "

Cloud grinned, duly impressed now that he knew what on earth she was talking about. "Good job, Elena. Let us know what you turn up."

" _You got it._ " There was the distinct impression of a satisfied hair-toss as she handed the PHS back to Cid. Clearly, the girl was in her element. Judging from Cid’s grumbling, he, too, was grudgingly impressed, but had been looking forward to breaking it down for his less technically-minded teammates.

" _That’s about the shape of it, I guess,_ " he said. " _Anythin’ new turn up on your end?_ "

Tifa and Cloud traded another glance. "Well, Vincent, for a start," she said faintly, and before Cid could do much more than scoff about his tardiness, added, "He had some... interesting news from the crater."

" _The crater?_ " Cid sounded bemused. " _What in hell was he doing up there?_ "

Cloud leaned forward onto the tabletop, not quite wringing his hands, but not just settling them together, either. "He thinks he saw Sephiroth."

Nothing but static on the line. Then a high-pitched sound from Elena and muffled thumping; Cid’s cigarette had fallen from his mouth. Tifa’s teeth worried at her lower lip. "Cid?"

" _Yeah,_ " was the pilot’s response, slower and older than the last one. " _I’m here._ " He sounded – and Tifa did, too – as if he were waiting for something, and Cloud felt, abruptly, that old sense of quickening, not quite nerves and not quite electricity, knowing they were waiting on his word. Fearless leader. Here we go.

"We’re looking into it," he said, keeping it clipped. Tifa beamed at him across the table. "Just keep doing what you’re doing. Even Vincent didn’t get a good look. But we’re heading north just in case. I’ll check in before we leave, but let me know the minute anything changes. And thanks for the heads-up on these... imbued people."

" _No sweat, Strife,_ " Cid said, and the wiry strength had returned to his voice, as though he, too, was buoyed by Cloud’s words. " _But hell, you tell Vincent from me – he’d better think twice before he joins the party with news like that again, or I’m gonna take to shootin’ the messenger._ "


	7. Awakenings I

[Day 6, 0430 Midgar Standard Time]

Flashing. There was flashing... something. It was sideways. Elena tilted her head slowly, so that her chin rather than her cheek was resting on her forearms, and squinted again at the display. It was so early. Omni, it was early. Had she fallen asleep here? She felt like she’d tangled with a staircase and lost.

Upon closer inspection, the flashing proved to be a text box. Did she wish to proceed? Elena scrubbed at her eyes for a few seconds and sat up a little straighter, grimacing at the collection of pops as her spine realigned itself, and tried to focus on what, exactly, she’d been about to proceed with, before sleep had happened.

Thick black wires, sometimes striped with red or yellow, trailed from the ports on the side of the machine, snaking across the floor to Cait Sith and on to the huge, clunky-looking servers she’d been working with half a decade ago, when they’d been the best thing she could afford. Technology, and her pay check, had come on a bit since then, but these babies had been what got her into Shinra, and they’d survived Meteor even though they’d been left in her parents’ house on the plate, so they had sentimental value. And now, of course, real value, since in all likelihood they held the only data they had that was relevant to Reeve’s kidnapping.

That would be the flashing, then.

Cait was hooked straight into the servers themselves, searching with a logic engine far more discerning than any normal operating system possessed, and passing any related files on to her computer more slowly, so that she could examine them in more detail. Paranoid as Shinra had been about its intellectual rights, all the files were carefully encrypted, so that had taken a little longer than she’d hoped. Obviously she’d been about to decrypt another file when sleep had hit. Pity she hadn’t managed to keep her eyes open long enough to hit ‘Yes’.

She hit it now, and shifted slowly, working life back into her limbs. Coffee, she thought, wriggling her toes. Coffee was an excellent plan.

She didn’t have far to go. Elmyra’s house had not been built for entertainment: Elena had been sitting on the living room floor with her chin down on the coffee table. Reno was sprawled over the couch, both feet up on the arm-rest, and over by the stairs, Rude was still mostly upright in an armchair. Elena slipped carefully through the nest of cables with the half-empty mug she’d been using the night before, and set about locating Elmyra’s instant coffee without waking the entire house.

When she returned to her cushion on the floor, there was another textbox, asking her to confirm that she wished to open a potentially harmful file. She hit ‘yes’, sipped her coffee while the thing loaded up, and started scrolling absently with one hand. It was a report, dated some forty years ago – from the look of it, preliminary work on the Jenova Project. Halfway down, there was a large white space helpfully labelled **Figure 1.4**. She sipped again while she waited for the image to load, and had to swallow quickly when it did so that she wouldn’t spit her mouthful all over her keyboard.

Reno jerked awake at her choked, gleeful exclamation, and watched her dubiously as she set her coffee aside and writhed a careful, seated victory dance in the middle of her cords, both hands flung up into the air.

"I," she told him smugly after she was done, "am a genius."

Reno scrubbed at one mako-green eye. "You better hope so, baby, or you’re just plain fucking crazy."

* * *

[Day 6, 0530 Wutai Standard Time]

Cloud was already awake when the PHS erupted into sound, but then, he hadn’t slept. He jerked upright at the noise and swung out of bed to stifle it. The moment he answered, however, Cait’s voice piped through, easily as loud as the ringtone, and Cloud was abruptly glad he had not yet moved it to his ear: " _I am a genius! _"__

____

Thumps and static and Elena in the background saying something like _excuse me but who is the genius here_ , and Cloud sighed, and rubbed the back of his neck, standing and slipping out into the corridor so that he wouldn’t wake Tifa, if she’d managed to get some sleep. "You found something."

" _We found _everything," Cait exulted, and then his yowl, diminishing, signalled that someone else had come into possession of the PHS. Cloud stepped out onto the porch and was surprised to discover Vincent sitting against the wall, dressed again in his typical garb. He nodded. Cloud returned the gesture, and then concentrated on the PHS.__

____

" _We found a lot. I’ve been putting it together. Half the files are corrupted, but the important thing is the source, not the content. _" Elena sounded very pleased with herself. " _I’ll give you two guesses about the origin of the reports. Here’s a hint: Science Department. _"____

_____ _

_____ _

Cloud’s jaw firmed. "Hojo," he said, suddenly certain, and Vincent blinked. Subtly, his attention shifted from the slowly brightening sky to Cloud’s face, the intensity of his gaze as unnerving as ever. Cloud half-turned from the older man, trying to focus, though his head was buzzing emptily.

" _That’s right. Well, half-right, anyway – there was a small team involved, but his name is definitely on here. He was probably just an intern at the time, but it’s all about how we access magic, how we use materia. They talk like there’s a lot of study behind it, but the older the data is, the more corrupt it gets, so we’re going to have to look for hard copies. _"__

____

____

Even pre-coffee, that was a no-brainer. "Nibelheim," Cloud said. "All right. We’re heading north in an hour or so. You all get to Nibelheim as soon as you can and start going through the basement. There has to be something. Maybe even an old system you can tap into."

Vincent shifted, stood. "Offer them the use of the house," he said, and slipped away inside without another word, presumably to wake the others in pursuit of the mentioned plan to leave in an hour. Cloud raised his eyebrows and passed on the message, his own puzzlement plain. Elena’s tone was just as bewildered, coloured with a hint of indignation.

" _The house? Uh... who exactly does he think the manor belonged to in the first place? _"__

____

____

Cloud grinned sheepishly. "I think Reeve gave him the deeds," he said. "No one else wanted the place."

" _Did he? _" Elena wondered aloud. Cloud had half a second to wonder about that himself before she moved on. " _Anyway. That’s AVALANCHE and Turks-plus-one to Nibelheim. _" She paused to allow him to confirm. He thought about it.____

_____ _

_____ _

"Plus one?"

" _Lana Meltzer. Used to be in Scarlet’s personal guard. Closest thing we have to a witness. She’s handy and she wanted to come along, so she put it to Reno and they settled it like Turks. _"__

____

____

She said it so brightly and officiously that Cloud was instantly suspicious. He waited. When Elena spoke again, she sounded like she’d rather have her teeth pulled without anaesthesia.

" _Look, she won the drinking contest, okay? Don’t mention it to Reno. He’s still pissed. _"__

____

* * *

____

[Day 6, 0630 Wutai Standard Time]

After hearing Yuffie’s reference to a council on the morning previous, which had, as she had promised, taken all afternoon, Vincent had been dreading pomp and ceremony when it came to departing for the crater. Either her council were more fond of sleep than she was, though, or the entire affair was less formal than he had suspected: aside from the stablehands, only two Wutaians waited to wish them luck on their journey, and these were Yuffie’s cousins, Shuichi and Katsura.

Both bowed to Yuffie, grave and respectful and doubtless a credit to their parents, and Katsura stepped forward to take both of Yuffie’s hands in hers, murmuring in a calm, good-natured way that rendered her words practically incomprehensible. Shuichi was more forthright in his concern.

"Call us at once if you have any need," he said, earnest despite the frown that creased his brow. "I wish that you did not have to leave us, particularly for a situation that you will not tell us all about..." Vincent did not raise his eyebrows, but his eyes did widen slightly. He wondered how on earth Yuffie had persuaded her council to let her leave without explaining the situation in full, and suppressed the urge to shake his head. No doubt her incorrigible will had played a part. Shuichi only confirmed this suspicion when he said, "In Lord Staniv’s place, I must say it... this had better not be about materia."

Yuffie laughed and socked him cheerfully in the arm. "Don’t be an idiot, Shu-chan," she said. "Would I give up the opportunity for days of endless boredom and head-shaking just to chase materia?"

Shuichi was still sputtering weakly in protest as they mounted up and kicked the chocobos into a trot. Vincent could hardly blame him.

* * *

[Day ?, ???? ??????????]

He was... sliding. Centre of gravity at the base of his skull, dragging him down and to the left in a slow, nauseating spiral. There was a painful throbbing in his teeth and sinuses - _heartbeat_ , he thought woozily. _Must be sick._ He was cold enough to be sick.

His fingers were far away. It took concentration to move them. They tingled slightly when he tapped them against the bed. Even the sharp click of his fingernails against the mattress sent painful tingles up to his knuckles.

_Click?_

He frowned, and opened his eyes.

And closed them again, emitting a choked gargling sound. White. Everywhere white, and bright enough to make his eyes water and his optic nerves sing with pain.

He managed to get a hand up to his eyes, and lay there for a few minutes, waiting for the red lines of light between his fingers to become bearable, or for enough strength to roll over - whichever came soonest.

Stubble pricked his wrist. He rolled carefully, feeling at his jaw, and grimaced. Wherever he was, he hoped there weren't cameras. Elena was the closest thing he had to a secretary, and she would not be happy. And when Elena wasn't happy, his toes got bruised.

Roused by the thought of Elena's wrath, he shaded his face with one arm and squinted at the room again through watering eyes.

'White' about covered it. He was curled at an angle in the middle of a corridor that refused to resolve - curved, he realised, squinting at the gentle arc of the strip lighting. He spent a few minutes blinking tears onto his nose, and the floor, before he struggled upright, still framing the hall with both hands as his eyes tried to close of their own accord. With tremendous effort, he stood, and sagged immediately into the nearest wall.

He waited until the bruised spots had chased themselves out of his vision, and took his hands cautiously away from the sides of his face. His eyes still hurt, but it was the same dull ache as the rest of his body. Ignorable, until he worked out where he was. Which would be some time, if this hallway was any indication. No doors that he could see, and no markings.

He was pretty sure he'd seen this movie.

He started walking, using the wall for support at first, and then venturing away from it, one hand raised as a precaution. He passed two doors with simple steel handles, both of which were locked, before he came to a T-junction. Identical in both directions.

"I _have_ seen this movie," he muttered. He turned right, and when that passage split, left.

After a few changeless minutes in the new corridor without threat of vertigo, he started to run.

* * *

[Day 6, 1700 Central Standard Time]

Nibelheim was just as Reno remembered it: cold, damp, and smelling faintly of mildew. The climate had a tendency to eat houses pretty quickly, especially the little shitboxes that had been popping up on the fringes: fast and cheap and in no way equipped to deal with the weather that kept the town small and quiet and in the middle of fucking nowhere.

The older homes were a different story. A little frilly for Reno’s liking, particularly about the windows, but there was good solid timber involved, which was more than he could say about the shitboxes. Still, there was surviving and there was surviving, and the Shinra Manor had done a good deal more than survive. If the sun ever came out in this shitty little village, he thought, tucking his hands into his armpits and absently considering buttoning his shirt for once, the place may well have sparkled.

Cid’s low whistle seemed to echo the thought. "Sure wish _my_ town all turned out to help with the whitewash," he said, slightly indistinct around a cigarette, and Barret p’shawed with gruff humour.

"Whatchu talkin’ ‘bout, foo’?" he grinned. "You ‘the captain’, ain’tcha?" He thumped Highwind’s shoulder once or twice while the pilot glared at him, and gestured at the house ahead. "Least it won’t have shit droppin’ down at us from the ceiling no more."

"Either that or they’ll be a lot better dressed," Cait chimed, happily ensconced between Nanaki’s shoulder blades. "Candy stripes and waistcoats. Bryll-slicked hair. Th’ whole shebang."

"C’mon, folks, we’re not here to sight-see," Reno grumbled, and shoved the gate open with his shoulder. It squealed in protest, and he couldn’t help but feel relieved. At least the manor had kept one set of rusty hinges. The AVALANCHE crowd filed past him first, then Rude and Elena, the latter looking distinctly un-thrilled to be here. Lana brought up the rear and gave him a carefully blank, bright-eyed expression in place of the shit-eating grin she surely wanted to have on her face. "Laugh it up," he invited, not quite sourly, and she chuckled, obligingly.

"Don’t be sore," she advised, right before they walked in the front door, and then raised generous brows at the interior. "Nice. Your friend’s got good taste," she added to Cid and Barret, who immediately broke into guffaws.

"If this is his, I’ll eat my kettle," Cid wheezed around his mirth. Barret thumped his back in agreement, neatly rearranging Cid’s spine, and causing him to curse and straighten up abruptly, swiping at errant eye-moisture. "You ask me, he spent too long in Midgar while the ceremonies were going on and when he got back, the place was already half-done. I know we had a hell of a do out by the rocket, and they ain’t seen half the shit these people would’ve." He jerked a thumb back at the heavy wooden doors, at the town beyond, and shook his head, only half grinning. "I bet poor Vince never had so much attention in his life."

The ‘attention’ was a near-complete renovation of the manor, from the timber floors to the whitewashed ceilings. Glass that had been infused with mould (and nastier) had been replaced with richly coloured stained glass in addition to the traditional Nibelian curliques. Once-bare walls now sported artwork, though Reno was unconvinced that these were the villagers’ choices. Elegant and understated as the rest of the house seemed to be, the vaguely morbid gaussian blur above the staircase struck him as a Valentine touch, though he couldn’t quite picture the man decorating without persuasion.

The bookcase in the corner room had been sanded and painted over, but it was abundantly clear from the second they slid it aside that no such attentions had been paid to the manor’s sub-levels. Just opening the basement made Red sneeze violently, and sent Cid into wracking coughs that forced him to leave the room and sit for a minute in the hall. Reno’s eyes watered as he stuck his head inside the door to assess the state of the staircase, and he found himself wondering absently if Valentine kept any face masks handy, or at least some kind of ventilator. A scuba tank, he thought vaguely, sticking out one foot and testing the first step. The wood felt slightly swollen with the damp, but it held his weight without protest.

"One at a time," he suggested, and backed up a few feet to hack into his lapel like the rest of them. He hiked up his shirt, buttoned it over his nose and chin, and beckoned to Rude and Elena. The bald Turk stepped forward like he was totally unconcerned with paltry things like lungs and airways clogging with microscopic fungi, and disappeared into the darkness ahead of Reno. Elena clamped one hand over her mouth and gestured that Reno should just go right ahead. His lips twisted in a grimace she couldn’t see and he made a mental note to return the favour before he swung himself into the damp and mildew-clotted darkness, following the thin beam of his flashlight and the occasional disgusted "..." from Rude as his hands brushed things best left unidentified.

The passage to the lab was cold, but much dryer than the staircase and, indeed, the rest of Nibelheim. This would have been more reassuring to Reno if he couldn’t hear things shifting in the darkness outside the range of their flashlights, raising the hairs on his neck just enough to make him feel like a fucking pansy without letting him shoot anything. Not his favourite fucking kind of game. Still, the things in the shadows stayed in the shadows and they made the lab without any trouble. After a few minutes of fumbling and one broken beaker, the sound of which had them all holding their breaths, the lights were humming slowly to life, revealing a stately desk, a large collection of weird scientific junk, and a veritable lifetime of excessively boring reading.

"Well," Elena said, looking faintly pale and harrowed. "Let’s get started."

* * *

[Day ?, ???? ??????????]

The running had not lasted long.

The Turks had insisted upon an exercise regime, but two decades of late nights with pizza and early meetings with pastries had worked their cruel magic on both stamina and metabolism. Reeve was a fast, efficient learner - it hadn't taken twenty years under President Shinra to stop hoping for miracles. 

Likewise, it hadn't taken more than an hour to stop expecting anything from this place. It was huge and cold and empty. Sluggish metabolism or not, that was going to be a problem inside twenty-four hours, especially if he couldn't find a water source.

Whoever had brought him here had stripped him of everything useful; he had no GPS, no screwdrivers, no tie. Bewilderingly, they had taken his shoes, but left his jacket, which was scant comfort in these temperatures. Especially without the weight of his screwdriver set.

Not that they'd have been much use. The corridors were seamless except for the occasional sliding enamel door and accompanying white plastic access panel; and their stark, unending whiteness was beginning to blur his vision.

Perhaps that was why the clown looked so crisp.

She could have been an ink mural: the black web of stockings crosshatched over skinny leg-like protrusions in the floor, the faded dress nothing more than a misshapen slick down one wall.

"Hello?"

There was the faintest suggestion of movement in the air in front of her, like the shimmer of heat in a desert, but the head did not turn toward him.

"Hello...? Are you..." _Awake? Alive?_

Before he could decide, the tangle of dark hair lolled toward him. He caught a flash of blue under the hair before he saw the face.

Reeve gaped at the jaggedly tattooed lips, the single teardrop inked down her left cheek. Her pupils were green, barely, like thin spatters of wax on the whites of her eyes.

She was staring right through him. Her hands made wandering, circling motions before her, chasing a long white feather through the air in slow motion.

Reeve remembered the hollow faces of wandering clones and crouched before he thought about it, holding out one hand as if to tempt a wary cat. "Hello," he said again. After a moment, lamely, "I didn't expect to find anyone here."

Her hands spun after the feather as if the air were thicker there. Her eyes tracked slowly down after him, focusing inch by inch. Finally, the pinprick pupils caught his own.

Reeve wriggled his fingers slightly. "Hey there."

A slow smile spread across her face while her hands stirred the air, but she didn't respond. Reeve wondered how long she'd been here.

He wondered if he'd been drugged as well.

"My name's Reeve. I'm going to take a walk." He mimicked walking with two of his fingers. "Do you want to come along?"

Her laughter made him jerk in surprise, and he sat with a thud on the cool metal floor, staring at her with wide eyes. Her focus seemed much better now, though her hands still waltzed the feather in slow circles through the air.

"I'll walk," she said, and pushed away from the wall and floor too languidly to possibly end up on her feet - and yet, she did.

"Who--" Reeve began. He shook his head and clambered to his feet. "... your name?"

She frowned at her hands, at the feather. "... a clown," she said eventually. "That's what he thought."

"Who thought?" Reeve asked, venturing after her as she began to take slow, measured steps along the corridor away from him. She shrugged, frowning again, as if the questions were disrupting her concentration.

He left it until the frown had evaporated, and then spoke more gently. "Do you know how you got here? How to get out?"

Her hands fluttered to a halt, and the feather floated into her waiting palms, but her step never faltered.

"I've always been here," she murmured, sad and serene. "There's no way out."


	8. Awakenings II

[Day 7, 0900 Central Standard Time]

Elena opened a report. Read the synopsis. Noted the names. Flipped to the appendices in case any of the diagrams were immediately recognisable, and then – as she’d been doing for the better part of an hour and a half – tossed it onto the pile that best described its relevance to their investigation. So far the ‘useless’ pile was large, and the ‘useful’ pile completely nonexistent.

This was discouraging. But it was a very large room, and Hojo had been intensely meticulous. They were bound to find something sooner or later.

Cait was plugged into the ancient computer behind her, limbs slack but ears and closed eyes twitching as he processed the information more slowly and thoroughly than he had in Midgar. She leaned back to see her laptop screen, wondering if he’d found anything yet, and sighed when she saw that the window was still blank.

Lana, who had started on the shelves on the far side of the room, glanced up at the movement. Elena shrugged at her, and Lana mimicked the movement more slowly, rolling her broad shoulders and shifting her position slightly on the cold stone floor. An old-fashioned double-barrelled shotgun lay across her lap – there had been a Yin Yang in the roughly-hewn hall outside when they had headed to the lab this morning – and she seemed to keep one hand on it at all times, curled lightly around the shaft. Elena was fond of her own gun, but she didn’t have to keep it out all the time. She wondered if the soldier was nervous.

Lana seemed to notice her attention, and cocked her head, sending her braids swaying. "Somethin’ wrong?" Elena flushed, looked back at her shelf.

"Uh, no," she said hastily. And after a few seconds, "Um, that gun..."

Lana’s eyes softened slightly, and she lifted it so that Elena had a clearer view. It was a magnificent piece of work, well-oiled, with a materia slot to the side of either barrel and a paired slot along the butt, just beneath the sight. "It was a gift," Lana said. "The guy who gave it to me... he died with the Shinra Building." Elena’s throat tightened in sympathy.

"At least he went down with the ship," she said, aware that she sounded cold and unable to prevent it, thinking of Tseng, one arm over his stomach while his life ran out onto ancient, thirsty stone. Lana chuckled, and it was a sound of understanding.

"I don’t know a single person who didn’t lose someone that year," she said, and settled the shotgun back across her lap. "At least I’ve got something to remember him by."

Elena thought of the two men in the next room, her partners, her brothers, the men who had mourned Tseng’s passing just as she had, and felt maudlin tears sting her eyes. She tucked herself closer to the shelves, tucked her knees up near her chest, and slid a new volume from the shelves. "It was a shitty year," she agreed with great sincerity. "But you’re right."

* * *

[Day ?, ???? ??????????]

There was no way to tell time in the complex, except perhaps by how long it took him to tuck his fingers back into his armpits. The outer walls might be insulated, but the building was designed to account for the body heat of far more people, so the temperature regulation... wasn't. He was beginning to build up a map in his head, though. The building was shaped like the club in a suit of cards, and it must have taken a lot of poker winnings to get it build because it was in violation of nearly every building regulation in Midgar.

None of the doors he'd seen so far had been accessible without keycards, which meant no bathrooms. There were no doors or windows in the outer walls that he could discern, which also meant no external fire escapes.

Of course, they might have staircases intended for emergency use, or fireproof chambers elsewhere in the building, but since the girl with the feather refused to go more than a few dozen feet from the outer wall, Reeve hadn't spotted one.

He kept pressing deeper and deeper into the corridors, hoping for bathroom or at least a water fountain, but there was nothing, and every time he ventured deeper into the building, the clown fell further and further behind.

She was a dozen feet behind him now, holding the forlorn quill in front of her like a shield. He knew from experience that as soon as they reached the fourth corridor she would stop where she was and wait for his return, if not bolt back to the outer wall - so he nearly groaned aloud when he heard her steps halt when they were barely past the second corridor.

"It's all _right_ ," he said as he turned. "There's nothing he-- what's wrong?"

She was half turned away from him, body held taut as if she had heard a distant voice, and was straining for it.

He approached her carefully, raising his hand. "Feather girl? Everything okay?" She didn't even jump when he touched her elbow.

"She's awake," she murmured instead, and a distant smile spread over her face. "She's moving. Is that what you call me?"

There was no pause between statement and query. Reeve fumbled.

"What?"

This time, she did look at him. "Feather girl. Is that your name for me now?"

Reeve blinked. He supposed the name was as good as anything else he was likely to come up with.

"Feather," he proposed, and watched her green eyes soften in a smile. "I think it is."

* * *

[Day 7, 1230 Central Standard Time]

The crater had cleaned up pretty well, Yuffie thought, mist or no mist. The Lifestream was good for something besides making Cloud crazy and getting Nanaki to talk, on and on: the ground _had_ healed since the last time she’d been here. Pretty impressive, she thought, to do in a year what it hadn’t accomplished in eons. Pity it had taken so much to do it.

The wind howled like a monster with its arm cut off, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood to sharp attention. It was healed, she thought, but it wasn’t any less creepy. Especially since Vincent seemed determined to stay as far away from the middle of the crater as he could. Knowing that something in Vincent’s head didn’t like the place did nothing to endear it to her, especially since the things in Vincent’s head, while not awesome and totally deadly ninja warrior princesses, had more claws and teeth than the rest of AVALANCHE put together.

They left the chocobos at the lip of the crater. The birds milled anxiously behind them as they descended, Cloud in the lead, Tifa following, and Yuffie trying to balance on the tippy-tops of the tall rocks so she could concentrate on something other than a) how freezing fucking cold it was and b) how totally not creeped out she was by her birds refusing to move, for all their fancy palace guard-type training. She was doing really well until Vincent’s heavy metal footsteps stopped behind her and she tried to spin around on one leg like a music box ballerina. The point of the rock crumbled under her sneaker and made her skid down into the rubble like the rest of them, and the way Vincent was actually looking at her feet instead of her face was like rocks in her stomach.

"What’s wrong?" Tifa called, wine-red eyes half-closed against the ice and the moisture in the wind, and Vincent shook his head, and crouched, his eyes still on the ground rather than their faces.

"I will remain here," he said. "Any further, and I become a liability you cannot afford."

Cloud crunched back toward them, shoulders hunched, and nodded slowly at Vincent’s assessment. "It’s pretty clear in here today," he said. "You can cover us from there."

Vincent looked up, but only to watch the mists speculatively. He nodded in his slight, barely noticeable way. "The wind will make it difficult, but I will try."

"If you gotta hit us, make it something unimportant," Yuffie said, "like Spike’s head." For some reason he didn’t seem to appreciate her humour, just dropped his gaze back toward the stones like they were essential to maintaining inner peace. Yuffie squashed the urge to kick one at him and followed Cloud down through the mist.

The crater was clear enough that they could see the strange crystal formation in its centre a good half mile before they reached it, guided by its weird dark glow.

It did kind of look like materia, Yuffie thought as they got closer, but materia that had reached in too many directions at once. The spires that stabbed out from the shadowy core were taller than she was for the most part, but they were too many, too empty and clean, to condense into materia. There was nothing of the shifting smoke that indicated life and knowledge in the crystal’s depths, even tinted to a brackish green by the Lifestream running beneath it.

Cloud stalked around it anti-clockwise, eyes narrowed. Puzzled and wary, but not yet afraid. Yuffie followed, but a break in the spikes made her pause to peer more closely. In the middle of all the spikes, there was a foot or so that was as smooth and flat as glass. It didn’t look natural, but from here she couldn’t get close enough to find out, and if this crystal had really grown out of black materia, she didn’t want to.

But it didn’t look like materia.

On impulse, she lifted a hand toward one of the spires, then paused and glanced to her left. Tifa flexed her fingers, glove creaking with the cold, just as unwilling to make contact with the shadowy surface. But the furrow to her brow and the set of her jaw said what Yuffie was already thinking: if Sephiroth was involved, better them than Cloud.

She touched the spire lightly with one fingertip, then splayed her hand against it. There was no magic there – or if there was, it was... cold. Indifferent. It wasn’t interested in sharing, that was for sure.

"Well, no one say the m-word and mean it, but... it doesn't feel awake." She scrubbed the heel of her gloved palm roughly over the icy surface, cupped both hands around her eyes to block out whatever glare there was in the dim, clouded crater, but whatever Vincent thought he had seen, it was completely invisible from here.

Without conscious thought, she lifted a foot and set it against a slanted crystal, began reaching higher and further so she could get closer to the large smooth facet within the spikes. It was slippery - too slippery to climb all the way into the middle without losing organs to a spire or three - but (she strained taller, braced herself and jumped, high as she could and backward so she would not be a Yuffie-kebab or maybe a Yuffie-sicle given that she couldn't feel her ears) the spires didn't go in all the way. And in the middle of all that hard spiky death, there was a flat space about the size of a toilet cubicle.

She started jogging on the spot.

Cloud, having paced all the way around the formation, raised his eyebrow. She grinned, lifted her arms and started punching, lifting her knees high as she could to work the blood back into them. Then she started backpedalling, nice and slow, and Cloud moved back at her gesture, though he did not look expressly delighted about it.

"What are you doing?" he said. She stopped jogging and shook out her legs, flexed her ankles, rotated her wrists and windmilled her arms, grinning all the while.

"Getting a closer look," she said, and took off running. She only needed clear her own height, but the ice would make it tricky. Still, she could touch down _there_ \--

Hands, flip, feet, push, tuck, _over_ \--

She skidded a little just as she touched down, but she crouched fast enough, lowered her centre of gravity enough that it was a matter of inches and not the feet that would have skewered her like the bad kind of massage. Nothing to worry about.

"Yuffie?" Tifa's voice, cracked with cold or worry. Yuffie grinned and started scraping at the frost that covered the surface of the crystal.

"My legs!" she called to them both. "I'll never walk again! Oh, oh, my spleen--"

And then her heart stopped, dropped, rolled right into her stomach and stayed there radiating ice out into her spine. 

Eight inches below the crystal’s surface, pale and unreal amidst the shadows, floated strands of silver hair. Beyond them, the tip of a long nose dropped away into darkness, but she could still make out the outline of a face in the crystal, and shoulders below them, and—

Sephiroth.

She launched herself out of the circle of crystal so fast that she damn near landed on Tifa’s head. She was five feet away and still back-pedalling when her brain caught up with her heart rate and she started digging materia out of her hip pouch by the handful.

Tifa and Cloud were already pulling back, already on high alert from the level of her alarm. Tifa didn’t look back; she accepted the materia Yuffie passed her without taking her eyes off the crystal mass.

"You saw him?" Cloud had raised his sword, hands tight on the hilt. Yuffie tapped her materia frantically against his shoulder.

"Equip, equip, equip," she sang in a frantic whisper. "He’s in there and he’s sleeping but it’s him. There’s still blood on his face. _Vincent._ " She didn’t dare turn to wave for him, but that didn’t stop her from shrieking it over her shoulder. " _Vincent!_ " 

Tifa thumbed materia into her armlet, deft fingers tracing over the linked slots to place the orbs. "We’ve beaten him before, Yuffie," she murmured. "We can do it again." The leather over her knuckles creaked as if in reassurance.

The metallic weight of Vincent’s boots against rock preceded his voice by a few bare seconds. "There’s something in the east." There was a strain in his voice that was nearly breathlessness, but Vincent never lost his breath over running. "Probably human, but..."

But no one took chances this close to black materia. Yuffie held materia out in a flat palm and he scissored them off and into Death Penalty’s barrel with only the barest hesitation. He didn’t have to ask what they had seen. But the moments passed with no movement from the crystal, and when Vincent’s breath hissed in between his teeth it wasn’t from anything Yuffie could see.

"Vincent?" The question was level, but the fact that Cloud had to ask at all was cause for concern. Vincent shook his head.

"Fine. They are simply... alert."

"So something’s awake," Cloud surmised. "Even if it isn’t Sephiroth."

"Spread out?" Tifa asked. The puffs of her breath came more slowly as she readied herself for battle.

"Around the materia," Cloud said. "Yuffie with me."

They crouched amid the crystal spires and listened as the wind swallowed the crunch of Vincent and Tifa's boots. Yuffie pursed her lips, poised, squinting into the wind and wishing, as she always did, that she'd brought goggles. Not that they seemed to be helping Cloud any. He waved a hand in front of his eyes, grimacing fiercely.

"What do you see, Spike?"

"Nothing real," he said firmly, which confused her until she heard the faint grind of boots and the rhythmic _chink_ of a staff into the rock. She'd heard that sound enough to drive her crazy, climbing into this gods-forsaken pit for the very first time with Cid right behind her, but this step wasn't as heavy or as business-like as the pilot's. It only took a flutter of pink through the snow to confirm the suspicion, and then she was on her feet trying to push past Cloud's out-thrown arm, teeth bared in fury.

"Show me your real face so I can _gut_ you, you son of a--"

The illusion - because it had to be an illusion - stopped, staff hovering in preparation for the next step. Her hair blew forward over her bare shoulders, and while she was pale as death, there was enough warmth in her to puff out condensation with each breath.

"You're here," she said, relief palpable, leaning into the staff. Her voice was whisper-dry.

Yuffie heard Tifa shout something into the wind, and the illusion shook her head and laughed. It sounded like she'd smoked all Cid's cigarettes and then tried to drink the ocean.

"It's me. There are things I need to do." She stepped forward, and they backed off in unison, though Yuffie was less suspicious with every moment - an illusion wouldn't be so tired, so worn. An illusion didn't have eyes like Aeris did.

Tifa circled into place at Aeris' back, eyes narrowed, Vincent facing out into the crater with his gun still raised. "Cloud?" she asked, and her voice was wavering.

"The Turks thought the Reeve copy was real, too," Cloud gritted out. "Vincent, what do you--"

"There's nothing else," Vincent said. "Just her." His eyes burned bright with Chaos when he turned and, to Yuffie's astonishment, stowed his weapon.

"Aeris." It was greeting, barely, and brimful of suspicion and hope. "How? And... why?"

Aeris smiled back, her hand still resting on the materia formation. "I'll let you know as soon as I do. But for now..." Her gaze became determined as she turned back to the crystal. "I think maybe you should stand back."

A soft white glow stole over Aeris' shoulders, down her arms and hands and into the depths of the crystal, refracting silvery light so intense Yuffie's eyes began to sting and water.

She threw up her hands to protect her vision as the light turned from white to brilliant green, and nearly swallowed her tongue.

The crystal was cracking.


	9. Awakenings III

[Day ?, ???? ??????????]

The doorknob caught his eye long before he realised what it was; a focused glimmer in an otherwise uniformly-lit corridor. The stairwell was dark and hungry by comparison, but Reeve's blood surged with pleasure and relief at the sight of the plain concrete steps.

"Fire regulations." He grinned back at Feather. "I knew there had to be stairs somewhere."

Feather's expression indicated that she was waiting for something to reach out from the darkness and eat them both, and now that he thought about it, he _could_ hear a faint slithering sound...

He turned back toward the staircase, wedged the door with his hip, and held invisible binoculars to his eyes, trying to coax his burned retina to lose the afterimage of the hallway.

His shadow sprawled almost to the next landing, but there was no other movement in the darkness. The sound was persistent, though - a low hiss that verged on a rumble. Reeve inhaled deeply through his nose, suspecting a gas vent, but what caught his attention was more... saline.

He suppressed a grin.

"Hear that?"

Feather walked forward to stand beside him, the sound of her boots a crisp ricochet from one wall to another. She cocked her head to one side. "Shhhhh," she echoed obediently.

"Right." Reeve tested the doorknob, both sides, and beckoned her nearer. "Hold the door. I'm going to check something. I won't be long."

Feather's eyes were wide, but she did as he asked. It took her whole body braced in the doorway to keep the thing from closing.

Nine steps down, he nearly broke his ankle on the landing. Two flights down, and the door may as well have been closed. He could see his hand in front of his face, but barely, and the way the rail was gathering grime as he went, he was almost glad.

The further he went, the colder the rail became, until his fingers were numbed and frost had formed in his moustache. The sound of waves was soft; the thin layer of water on the next step was a nasty surprise, and the combination of freezing water to the knee and landing painfully on the stairs when he slipped was even nastier.

For a moment, he was dazed. Then he yelped and scrambled backward, already feeling the spires of cold writhing into the flesh of his leg. He lay there for a few moments, cursing under his breath and rubbing at the sopping fabric before he noticed Feather's voice, her footsteps.

"I'm all right!" he assured her, and winced as the sound circled around them. "I fell. Be careful. There's water down here." Only five steps down, too. "The staircase is flooded."

The staircase threw her footsteps so that his first sign of her was the tickle of the feather by his ear. "Hey! Careful. I'm here. The water's just below me."

"Hurt?" Feather asked. Reeve smiled despite himself.

"Don't think so. Just a little colder than I was five minutes ago."

Her hand was on his arm, so he felt it when the shudder ran through her; her nails were sharp, even through his shirt. The feather brushed his hand when it left her grip. He groped after it, but whichever way it went, he couldn't see.

"What is it?" he whispered, already preparing to move, but her grip lightened again almost immediately.

"They're all awake," she said, dazed. "All of them. Can you hear?"

"Hear what?"

Feather stood, her namesake forgotten. He heard her moving up the stairs.

"Feather?" He stood and groped after the handrail. "Hear what?"

She didn't answer. But as they climbed higher - three floors, four, seven - he started to hear it, too. It resonated in the handrail, and dimly through the concrete walls.

An airship.

* * *

[Day 7, 1410 Central Standard Time]

Vincent was the first to react, a blur that cast a brilliant scarlet silhouette when he stepped between Yuffie and the crystal. He wrapped his human arm about Aeris' waist and hauled her backward, but the magic was done.

"Retreat!" Cloud barked, one arm up to shield his eyes even with those dopey sunglasses, and he didn't have to tell Yuffie twice. She dashed a few dozen feet, two fingers to the Barrier materia on her armlet the whole way, and then spun, Conformer whirling between her fingers, ready to deflect an attack.

None came.

The crystal spires shone bright with the lifestream even as they toppled and shattered, one by one. Tifa made some small noise of horror as the center of the crystal dissolved into darkly shining grit that whirled away on the winds of the crater, leaving the crystal's occupant dusty and pale amid the remnants.

Aeris did not struggle against Vincent, which was probably the only reason he let her go to take aim at Sephiroth's body.

"Why?" His voice was flat, tightly controlled. There was an undertone to it that lifted the hair on Yuffie's neck into a Cloud impression.

Aeris looked at Cloud, then back to Vincent, her eyes empty with exhaustion. "The Planet isn't finished with us yet," she said finally. "I don't know how, or why, but I need to get him out of the crater."

Cloud gave her a long look.

Yuffie nearly groaned. Anyone could have told him two years of being the king of the grumps was no match for Aeris' eyes. Vincent couldn't do it, and how long had he been grumping around?

Finally, Cloud ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "... we have a camp blanket. We should be able to wrap him, and carry him in it." He glanced at Tifa, then at Vincent, waiting.

"I sense no immediate danger," said the gunman. "But I dislike this."

Yuffie threw her hand in the air. "Ditto."

Aeris turned her sorrowful green eyes on them, which in Yuffie's books was totally cheating. Vincent looked at his shoes.

"You don't understand. There's something left to do. The Planet..." Creases appeared at the corners of her eyes as she tried to find the words. "Everything filters through the Planet. The storm over Wutai," she nodded to Yuffie's sudden attention. "Everything. He's important. I just don't know why."

She started back toward the broken nest of crystal, picking her way carefully across the rocks until she could scuff through the materia dust. Vincent followed with the Death Penalty drawn, Yuffie with her fingers splayed across as much materia as she could touch.

"The Planet couldn't take him in, but she could be near him, here." Aeris murmured, kneeling by the body. "She wouldn't want me to keep him close, unless he could help us."

Tifa gnawed at her lip. She looked at Cloud. "If we don't get a blanket around him soon, we might not have to make a decision."

Cloud shook his head. "You're right. Do it."

Yuffie waited as Tifa spread the blanket out beside Sephiroth. Cloud moved to his feet, and Vincent to his shoulders, and they lifted his spare frame easily between them.

The rolling was slightly less dignified. And probably tighter than it needed to be, but that was Cloud for you. Ever paranoid.

When they had a Sephiroth caterpillar between them, and Yuffie had stopped holding her breath to keep in the laughter and made herself lightheaded for her trouble, she touched Aeris on the arm and tried not to flinch at the cold.

"Geez, you are an icicle, lady. What gives?"

Aeris was tired, but her smile was warmer than hot rice wine in the middle of winter. "There's no winter in the Promised Land."

"That just means no snowball fights," Yuffie shot back, just to see the smile again. After a few minutes of watching the Sephiroth scroll wobbling between Vincent and Cloud, she said, "When you say he can help us..."

"The storms," Aeris said. "They're strange, aren't they?"

"They are out of season like pineapple in Bone Village," Yuffie agreed. She paused. "Was that meant to be an answer?"

"Something is affecting the weather. Something... not human." She paused a moment to look back the way they'd come, breath clouding around her in a way Yuffie had not realised was reassuring until now. "I think he can tell us what it is."

"What makes you think he'll feel like talking?"

Aeris smiled, tweaked Yuffie's nose with icy fingers, and hitched her skirt to labour after Cloud.

Yuffie stopped being reassured.

* * *

[Day 7, 1530 Central Standard Time]

Shera's fingers turned white on the hand rail when she saw just what she was meant to be winching on board the Sierra, but she'd always been a practical woman. Four members of AVALANCHE was more than enough, even if her husband was elsewhere.

Besides, at the moment, the General didn't look like he could so much as breathe heavily, let alone wield a longsword.

"I don't want him on board this ship any longer than you do," Cloud told her as she nudged Sierra out over the tundra. "Drop us east of Rocket Town - we'll ride from there."

"Why?" Shera asked, for once with all the bluntness of a true engineer. "The last thing you want is for someone to catch sight of him. Especially coming into Nibelheim."

Cloud raked a hand through his hair, frustration beginning to show through his weariness. "The last thing I want is to put you in danger. Cid's already going to kill me for getting you to take Sierra out without him."

"He'll get over it," Shera said, and gave Cloud a sideways smile. "You want to keep him contained - where better than miles above the ground? The wind's tricky around Mt Nibel, especially with these storms, but Sierra's clever enough to manage it." She patted the console, feeling the hum of the engines from her fingertips to the soles of her feet.

Cloud pinched the bridge of his nose and then rubbed at his eyes fitfully.

"The closer you can get us, the better," he said at last. "The last thing we need is for anyone to see him. Or Aeris. She's safe enough out here, but if word got back to Kalm... that church is a monument, now, or close enough."

"What about Elmyra?" Shera asked, softly.

Cloud shook his head. "I don't know."

* * *

[Day 7, 2000 Nibel Standard Time]

Reno dropped a binder on his foot when his PHS started off. He was still swearing under his breath when he picked it up and got a loud hiss of static in place of a greeting. "Strife? That you?"

"..eno. Ch... g in. We found it, b--" Several long seconds of static, in which Reno blocked his other ear and screwed up his face in concentration. "...like it."

"Can't hear a damn thing, Strife, let me get outta this cellar." He hit the lab door backward and slid out into the spooky as shit corridor that led to the staircase. Weirdly, the reception was slightly better out here.

"All... here, on...y back now." Cloud's voice became a few tones sharper. "Who's going... ate?"

"The gate?" Reno hazarded. "Laney's up on the second floor with the cat and a rifle."

"G... ough. Tell... et us thr--"

Three sharp beeps and the line disconnected abruptly. Reno glared at the sad little signal and battery displays in the darkness and shoved the thing back in his jacket pocket. "Fucking piece of Junon shit. Why the hell do we bother with that crap?"

He slammed through the lab door. Rude looked up and raised his eyebrows.

"Strife's on his way. Couldn't hardly hear a goddamn thing, but he sounded cool as ever."

Rude's eyebrows remained raised, but he turned back to his binder. Reno stalked back to his chair and threw himself into it. It squeaked in protest as he tilted it backward to rest his heels on the shelving.

"Can't stand waiting around to hear shit," he muttered, leafing through pages to find a diagram he'd been trying to decipher.

Rude said nothing. Reno threw his pencil at him for cheek.

* * *

[Day 7, 2000 Cosmo Candle Time]

Cloud turned from the viewport and stopped short to avoid crashing into Tifa. She smiled and took his face gently in her hands.

"Stop pacing," she said, soft and soothing and dark eyes warm with sympathy. "Go talk to her."

Cloud huffed a laugh, unwound enough to look sheepish. Aeris had vanished from the bridge the moment they got in the air, and he'd been trying to give her space, trying to show Tifa that it would still — always — be her first.

"I—"

There was too much to say.

"You think you're the only one?" Her fingers scrunched in his hair. "Go talk to her, you goof. I'm keeping Shera company."

* * *

[Day ?, ???? ???????]

By the time they reached the top of the stairs, Reeve could no longer hear the airship for the pounding of blood in his ears. His lungs burned, every breath stinging its way in and steaming its way out. He collapsed against a wall as soon as they left the staircase.

Feather crouched beside him, staring fixedly down the corridor to their right. "Which way?" Reeve asked. He slid down the wall, blowing on his fingers.

Feather's eyes fixed on his for a moment, but she didn't respond. She stared the corridor down as if it might grow teeth and bite. Reeve sighed. His breath drifted past her, not vanishing for four or five feet. The temperature was still dropping, and the slight breeze clawed at every patch of exposed skin.

He was cold enough that, for a few seconds, all he did about the breeze was hunch his shoulders and tuck his hands into his armpits.

Then he blinked.

Plucked her namesake from Feather's hand, held it in front of him, and dropped it. It drifted back toward her feet and skittered down the corridor away from them.

Reeve let out a laugh that was little more than a hoarse bark and staggered upright. Feather's owl-eyed expression only made him grin harder. "Grab that feather and follow me! That breeze is our way out."

They dropped the feather at every junction, following the source of the breeze until they reached what Reeve had come to think of as the building's core: a solid wall that made a rough square in the center of every floor they had visited. A quadrangle had been his initial thought, but if that were true then either the building was largely underground or the quad was drowned in salt water like the lower floors.

He didn't need the feather to follow the breeze now; he could feel the wind's teeth graze his throat. He followed the wall to the right, turned left to continue following it around the core, and--

\--nearly swallowed his tongue. He reversed abruptly, put a finger to his lips for Feather's benefit and tried to think. He hadn't seen movement. What he had seen was... darkness. So. He peered back around the corner.

The corridor was not white.

Nor was it in shadow. What had looked like darkness was the white of the corridor changing to the cross-hatched patterns of plate metal.

Filthy, salt-encrusted plate metal.

"Might be our way out," he murmured to Feather. "Follow me. If you see anything, keep quiet - just squeeze my hand." She nodded, but the fear in her eyes was palpable, and her grip was so tight already that he wasn't sure he'd be able to tell the difference.

The plate metal belonged to a decrepit store room, empty but for a few scattered archive boxes. Reeve's shoes crunched over a congealed dark green substance and the remnants of the jar that had once contained it. Whoever this complex belonged to, they had cleared out in a hurry.

Feather tugged at his hand. Reeve looked left, and out into... nothingness.

The source of their breeze was a set of doors wedged open with crates that were more ice than anything else. Beyond them, a broad catwalk led to a platform of rusted grating, frost-coated scaffolding and the most worrying set of stairs Reeve had seen since Sector 7 had been obliterated. Warily, he approached the doors and peered out into the quadrangle.

A hundred feet below the platform, the ocean heaved, teased into choppiness by the wind trapped in the centre of the building. Perhaps ten or fifteen feet above that, about half the quad had a floor of grating and plate metal. There were more crates down there, some as old as the icy lumps holding the door, and some considerably newer, still covered in tarpaulins.

The scaffolding beside them was part of a service elevator. Reeve stared at the base of the shaft, only a few feet above the water, until he realised what they were looking at.

"It's a docking bay," he muttered to Feather. "For a sub. Or at least, it used to be." He frowned. "But I could have sworn... ah. There." He shaded his eyes and pointed up.

The quad was surrounded on all sides by twelve or thirteen storeys' worth of building, but as the building's roof came closer there were more metal platforms, and larger structures projecting from each wall - enough to secure and protect an airship of middling size.

"We must have missed it," Reeve muttered. "Nice to know we're not alone, though. Probably."

The wind picked up, cutting right through his thin shirt. Feather shrank closer to his side and he winced at the cold leather of her dress against his ribcage.

Reeve looked at the staircase, and then at the newer stacks of crates.

"Has to be something useful down there. Let's go."


	10. The Summoning

[Day 8, 0000 Nibel Standard Time]

Elena woke to a long eerie creak as her door opened, and rolled over when she heard Rude shuffling quietly into the room. "Already?" she asked, and then, squinting, "Not Reno?"

Rude shook his head. He sat down on the other bed and began to unlace his shoes. Elena huffed and tossed back the covers, reaching first for the handgun stashed under the nightstand, and then for the watch sitting on top of it. Five in the morning. She used to go to bed at this hour.

Cait Sith hadn't moved except for the eerie flickering of his eyelids. Cables coiled around him like the thin, battered tendrils of an ancient jellyfish. Text raced over the monitors she had hooked up to him; not as fancy as the traditional graphical progress bar, but a hell of a lot faster.

She stretched, yawned deeply, and ended with a squeak and a pop of her jaw. Yeesh, she was getting old. And these beds weren't helping her spine any.

She tugged her singlet back down her stomach and grabbed the blouse she'd dropped over the back of her chair. Her hair was still stuck in the collar of her shirt when grabbed her jacket, and she was halfway down the hall before she realised she'd missed a buttonhole somewhere along the line and the blouse's sides were misaligned.

She hung a right and headed down the stairs. Coffee first.

She saluted Barret with a steaming mug as she passed him, wedged in the window seat and thumping his good hand against the sill in a rhythm only he recognised. She went down the staircase wishing she'd put her jacket on, wishing there were travel mugs so she didn't have to worry about monster mould falling into her coffee on the way down to the lab, and above all wishing she'd remember to bring a comb down there already so she didn't spend the whole time certain there were webs and lice and spiders in her hair.

Reno was on his stomach on the floor, jacket balled up to support his chin as he leafed listlessly through an improbably large, mouldering reference book. He kicked his legs vaguely as she joined him onto the floor, next to the binder Rude had pulled down on its side to mark his place. She pulled it out, sat her coffee on the shelf in front of the space it had occupied, and ran a hand through her hair, wincing at the tangles.

"Nothing useful?"

"Not a lot. This might have something, though. Lots of notes in the margins."

Elena snorted. "Good luck. If it's Hojo's, you'll need to run it through the database to get a translation. You'd think he was a doctor, with that handwriting." She took a sip of her coffee, then a gulp when she discovered it was a good temperature.

Reno's eyes followed the mug when she put it back.

"No," she said. "I found it. Go make your own."

"Gimme a break, Laney, I've been down here all night."

"Not my fault," Elena grumbled, flipping past a page of chemical equations and making a face at a ziplock bag of faded photographs depicting the effects of the chemicals on a previously human subject. "Ugh. I don't know how you can stay down here longer than your shift, anyway."

"Couldn't sleep." Reno rolled onto his side and reached past her to grab her mug. She didn't move to stop him. "Strife didn't say much when he called, but the alternative to them finding something is that Valentine's cracked, and I don't like that any better."

"Thanks for sharing," Elena said after a moment. Now she wouldn't be able to sleep, either. She'd never met a Turk who'd gone off the deep end, but recruits - and trainers - told stories, and none of them were pretty.

Mind you, there weren't many stories that were pretty in the glory days of Shinra, Inc. Not if you really sat and looked at them.

"Fuck, I hate this place," Reno muttered, echoing her thoughts. She held out her fist for him to bump, and settled in to read the rest of her binder. Judging from the sludge left in the bottom of her mug, it was going to be a long day.

* * *

[Day ?, ???? ???????]

It was much colder near the water. Their breath emerged in frail white clouds, and every step made the grating crack alarmingly beneath them. Reeve sincerely hoped it was only the frost, and walked on top of the support girders just in case.

Their first port of call was an abandoned forklift. Only a retractable knife and a smallish wrench on the dashboard, but if its driver had been anything like Reeve... ah. He wriggled his arm back out from under the seat and grinned at a crowbar. Perfect. The crates would be loud, but they'd also be brittle. It wouldn't take long to crack one open. If he chose his crates carefully, they'd be back inside with supplies before anyone had time to investigate.

Of course, if the first two or three were useless, they couldn't count on having time to open any more. He eyed the rest of the space, scratching at his slowly-accruing beard. This couldn't be much of a stockpile for food. Probably the best they could hope for was impromptu weaponry, blankets and tarps.

"See anything?" he whispered to Feather. She shook her head. "Right. I'm going to walk around and see if I can find anything useful. I'm probably going to make some noise, so I need you to keep watch, okay?"

She nodded, glum and nervous. He dug in his pocket for the knife, and handed it and the wrench over to her.

"The knife isn't much good, but you should be able to at least club someone with this," he told her grimly. "Give me a yell if anything's wrong, and head for one of the doors. I'll find you."

"Okay," she said. Weary and lost as she was, she mustered a smile. "Reeve."

"That's the way," he said, reaching out to ruffle her hair. "See you in a minute."

He walked carefully across the grating, wary of the way his shoes slid on the frosted metal. Most of the crates had no distinguishing marks, other than the occasional stencil of a cracked glass and an arrow. Unlikely that he wanted any of those. He tried one with no visible markings first.

The sharp crack of wood made him glance around sharply. Feather's messy hair was only just visible over the top of her crates, but she didn't look more than usually afraid. He took a deep breath, and continued prising the crate open.

The first crate contained little more than hospital green felt, neatly folded and tightly packed. He took out four folded blankets, replaced the lid, and crunched back across the grating to leave three of them with Feather. The other, he unfolded and quickly refolded into a makeshift sack.

"Once more," he said to Feather quietly. "If you have to run, take just one of those with you. All right? Put it around you now. It'll keep you warm." And in the wan light of the docking bay, you'll blend in better, he thought privately.

The crates near the submarine bay had large black 'R's stencilled on their sides. He prised the first one open and frowned at the foil packets inside for a moment. Then he squinted at the dot-matrix letters on the sealed edges. 'P' and a string of numbers, 'E' and another string... package and expiry dates? He wrinkled his nose. They were older than he was.

He grabbed a dozen, just in case, and resettled the makeshift sack on his shoulder. Figuring 'R' stood for 'rations', he stepped back from the dock, heaving out a sigh that clouded the air around him for four or five seconds. He flexed his fingers warily, shoved his free hand into his pocket and glanced up at the square of sky he could see beyond the catwalks. It wasn't getting dark. But it was getting colder... one more crate, then, and then back to the first for more sheets. But which?

The crates in the centre of the floor all looked alike. He doubted anything in the fragile crates would be useful to him, and the food was probably a lost cause, even in this temperature. But there was a line of crates along the far wall, underneath a platform and loosely covered by a tarpaulin. Tech, requiring protection from the elements, or perishables? He decided to take the chance.

His breath seemed to cling to his face as he approached the wall. He glanced back toward Feather and stared for a moment at the cloud of vapour that had gathered around her. He cocked his head at her, but her eyes dropped closed, a frown on her face.

One crate, then back indoors before they both froze to death.

He wedged the crowbar, prised the top open, and had to wave his hand before his face to see through the vapour of his breath. He froze and stared as tiny ice crystals pattered down the back of his hand. What in the Planet's name--

CLANG.

He whipped around, took a step forward before he remembered to grab the crowbar. Feather had disappeared from her crate. He could hear her footsteps on the grating - hers, and someone else's.

"Come out, come out, Mr President..."

Reeve's jaw clenched. Ayuki.

Feather came pelting around the corner, knife blade extended and held close to her left leg. She caught onto him as she ran and together they slipped and skidded across the icy grating.

"How far do you think you'll get?"

Reeve's brow creased. Hard to tell where it was coming from. He grabbed at Feather's arm, slowing behind a stack of crates near the wall. Feather struggled, silently, but so fiercely that he could not hold her. He held a finger to his lips. Slowly, she stilled.

"I know her," he said. "I want some answers."

Feather looked no less drawn, no less afraid, but there was a spark of determination in her face nonetheless. She nodded, and crouched down to catch her breath.

"Do you think you're hiding, Mr President?" A laugh in the voice this time. Reeve wet his lips, and resettled his grip on the crowbar.

"Ayuki," he called, directing his voice at the wall so it would rebound, confuse her. "What do you want?"

She laughed. "Ah, Mr President. You like to think you know your staff. How little you knew of our intentions."

"If I'd known, I wouldn't be here, Ayuki." Reeve said, frankly. "What do you gain from this?"

"It's not what I gain, Mr President, but what I have already gained." Her voice was coming closer now. He crouched down carefully, barely touched the tips of his fingers to the grating. "It's what you _owe_ ," she crowed, and he felt the vibration in the metal. She was getting closer.

He glanced up at Feather, who had her eyes closed, as if she were listening. He peered around the corner, the way they had come. Footprints in the frost. Damn, damn, damn.

"I owe plenty, Ayuki," he called. "But not to you."

"Such arrogance," Ayuki snapped. Her voice seemed to come from everywhere. "There is nothing your kind does not owe!" There was a chill wind, a crash, and a sound like the world was breaking apart.

Frozen shards of crate cascaded around them, slicing at Feather's bare arms and rattling through the grating and shattering further on the frozen water below.

Reeve sucked in his breath. Ice magic.

"Stay down," he muttered to Feather. "I'm going to do something stupid."

He raised his voice so that Ayuki could hear. "I'm coming out." He raised his hands, including the crowbar, and edged slowly to his feet. "I'm as out of the way as I can get, and you don't want me dead just yet," he added as he turned. "I was only looking for blankets. Food. It's a little cold up the--"

He nearly lost his grip on the crowbar.

Ayuki had no weapon, but a materia amulet glimmered scarlet at her neck. Her hands were encrusted with ice, and she was surrounded by a cloud of ice crystals that echoed a form much larger than hers - long limbs, commanding posture.

"... Shiva."

The mist stretched and arched like a cat. Ayuki laughed, but the voice was not entirely hers. The ice around her hands cracked as she flexed her fingers. Frost gusted from her mouth as she spoke.

"And your friend, Mr President. No more than an experiment with undesired results, but an important specimen all the same."

Reeve heard Feather begin to rock and mutter, and rested a hand on her head. "If she's so important, why leave her to wander? Why aren't you taking better care of her?"

"She looks so frail, doesn't she? But she looks after herself better than you do, Mr President." Ayuki's snarl became a smirk. "She had enough sense to stay away."

Feather was curled forward around her knees. Reeve knelt down beside her, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and finally heard what she was muttering.

"She's angry," Feather whispered. "So angry."

"It's going to be all right." The air seemed to tighten around them, pulling at skin and clothing with chill electricity.

"Stand up," Ayuki ordered. "Both of you."

"She thought she had escaped..."

"What? Who?" Reeve shook his head, called to Ayuki. "She's confused. Just give me a minute."

"Confused? How terrible." Ayuki's eyes flashed, her fingers flexed. "Let me help!"

Reeve dropped the crowbar, grabbed Feather and threw them both out of the way as ice engulfed the remnants of the crates they had been hiding behind. The crowbar was swallowed by the miniature glacier.

Feather still had both hands wrapped tight around the knife, muttering frantically. "Just go to sleep, just go back to sleep..."

"Shut her up," Ayuki snapped. She raised her hands again, but the ice on her fingers crumbled, fell through the grating to clatter against the frozen surface of the ocean.

"Go back to sleep," Feather sobbed. The mist around Ayuki roiled, lost form momentarily. Reeve glanced between the two women, one snarling, one shrinking away, and made a decision.

He grabbed Feather by the shoulder, hauled her to her feet. "I don't know what you're doing, but it's working," he hissed. "Keep it up!" He spun the girl to face Ayuki, who reached and clawed; the iceberg beneath her had risen to engulf her legs to the knee.

"Sleep," Feather insisted.

"I will never sleep again!" Ayuki snarled. The mist rippled around her, became almost solid. Shiva threw her arms forward, mouth open in a silent battle cry--

\--Feather crossed her forearms in front of her face, flung the knife--

\--and with a sound like the entire building was tearing itself apart, the ice around Ayuki splintered, shattered, dissolved. Feather and Ayuki dropped to the grating like their strings had been cut.

He couldn't shake Feather awake, so he wrapped her in a blanket and went to check Ayuki. She was breathing, albeit shallowly. He checked her belt and came up with the oldest PHS he had ever seen. No purse. No keycards. No materia, except in the torque around her neck.

The _flat_ torque.

He unclipped it, flipped it over in his hands just to be certain. Dull red, like old blood, and sheared neatly in half to be set into the bronze. All the same, he'd bet Midgar it was Shiva.

He tossed a blanket over Ayuki, and slipped the torque into his pocket. With any luck, she wouldn't be able to summon without it.

With any luck, he and Yuffie could work out how she summoned with materia that was cracked.


	11. Smoke

[Day 8, 0600 Nibel Standard Time]

A hand on his arm. Whose?

To steady his breathing even as his heart rate leapt was second nature. There were low voices in the room with him, both female; one clearly Midgan, the other with the softer vowels of Wutai. He fought the urge to crease his brow. Another of Zack's pranks?

_Tubes and monitors, blinking LEDs, something wet and warm down the side of his face—_

The Wutaian voice stopped abruptly. Footsteps. His flesh prickled in warning, and then a voice much closer to his ear said, "Nice try, but you weren't breathing that evenly when you were asleep."

The Wutaian rocked back on her heels, crossing her arms in front of her. She looked faintly green. The hand on his forearm rubbed two gentle circles. "How are you feeling?" asked the Midgan.

_Watery light filtered down on ancient stone - an altar. The footsteps of his prey drew nearer._

He started to sit up. In an instant the gentle hand had moved from his arm to his chest. "Not just yet," the Midgan advised. "You've been asleep for... quite a while."

Everything in her posture bespoke kindness and warmth, but the guarded posture of her companion said otherwise.

The Wutaian swallowed heavily, then thumbed the PHS at her hip. "Guest's awake, Spike."

There was a brief burst of static. " _Copy that. Can he walk?_ "

She eyed him closely, then shrugged. "Not sure yet."

" _Ten minutes to find out, then we winch him down. Out._ "

Sephiroth eyed the Midgan woman. "With your permission...?" he said, raising an eyebrow. She blinked, and withdrew her hand. Black spots scattered across his vision as he forced himself into a sitting position. He closed his eyes.

"That... wasn't sleep."

The Midgan woman shifted uncomfortably. The Wutaian scowled, opened her mouth, and closed it again with a grimace as the room shuddered and swayed. Another voice rang out from a speaker system, ricocheting from the metal walls.

"Just a little turbulence, folks. We'll be through the worst of it shortly."

The Midgan patted the Wutaian on the back with no change in her gentle patience as the Wutaian bravely loosed the contents of her stomach into the steel basin jutting from one wall. "Nearly there, Yuffie," she sympathised.

_Dark eyes behind a lattice of tinted steel; no anger, only certainty and a wave of blades._

Sephiroth pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to distract himself from the flashes of vision/memory, and made to swing his legs out of the camp bed.

Then he gritted his teeth and sat back to wait for a convenient break in the vomiting to ask where he might find his uniform, or at least a set of trousers.

* * *

Highwind was on his feet and glaring out the window before Elena even thought to ask him what his problem was. She figured it out pretty quick when he slammed the door open and started crashing down the stairs, shouting about people killing themselves on their first time through this wind tunnel, though. Apparently no storm could dull his ears to an airship.

She tapped at her earpiece. "Looks like Strife and company are here."

" _On my way,_ " Reno crackled. Elena stood, stretched her neck, and trailed in Highwind's wake to lean in the frame of the wide open door to the overgrown grounds behind the manor, where Highwind was either signing directions at the airship's pilot, or presenting a rendition of frustration in interpretive dance.

Nibelheim had never got a convenient airstrip, and in winds like these even the sleek, contoured airship above her was forced to descend drunkenly, adjusting every thirty feet. It settled eventually on a monstrous cluster of plants that may once have been a hedge maze. Decades of neglect had prepared the plants remarkably well for life as an airship cradle; they were so densely overgrown that they hardly compacted, though the crew might have to duck a little more than usual on the gangplank.

Predictably, Kisaragi was the first onto solid ground, and muffled by her own hands. "Organic redecoration coming through!" Elena tried not to listen.

"Everyone accounted for?" she called as Cloud ducked out of the ship's belly.

"And then some." He eyed her. "None of you are going to like it. Gather everyone in the main hall. You too, Cid."

"I ain't goin' nowhere 'til I've seen my wife," Highwind spat. "The hell were you thinkin', setting down in this headwind?"

Cloud looked him over. "As long as you don't have a weapon, go on in." He glanced back to Elena. "Give us ten minutes. And try to convince the rest of the suits not to shoot anyone."

* * *

"Just try not to look like you're about to kill everyone," Yuffie advised, "and everything will be fine. Oh, and let Aeris go first. Everyone loves Aeris. She's like cupcakes. I may have slightly over-medicated for that trip."

"You don't say," Sephiroth replied. She reminded him of someone, though whom he could not say.

"You really should let her go first, though," she continued. "Right, Spike?"

The blond man — SOLDIER, First or Second Class ability, though he didn't wear the colours, and the persistent nag of almost-memory was beginning to give Sephiroth a headache — turned to look at Sephiroth. "You should probably let Aeris go first," he conceded, and turned his attention elsewhere. "Vincent. Go on ahead. Make sure they're prepared."

He paused as Yuffie bounced absently on the spot.

"... take her with you, will you?"

Sephiroth frowned as the red-cloaked man steered the girl back toward the gang plank, to loud and largely unintelligible protest. Their caution was explicitly for him, then. The fingers of his left hand curled reflexively around a sword that wasn't there, and he straightened them again resolutely.

"After you, then," he said to Aeris.

He recognised Nibelheim at once, although he had never walked the gardens of Shinra Manor. It must have taken decades for the creepers and topiaries to so thoroughly decimate the wide stone courtyard. His frown deepened. Surely it could not have been decades. Perhaps the mountains were simply more fertile than they had appeared on his last visit. It was—

_—raining, water pounding soil into slurry, and still the dragon's speed outclassed his partner. Sephiroth raised his sword, seeing bright blue eyes slit with pain, stepped forward—_

—into silence.

And then, motion.

* * *

AVALANCHE and its assorted Shinra employees were scattered around the entrance hall. The room had stilled, tensed, when the door had opened, but now that he and Yuffie had been identified, for the most part they went back to talking amongst themselves. Elena leaned against the arm of the sofa beside Tifa and Barret, obviously expecting some conversation, but although she smiled gamely at Barret's words, the martial artist offered nothing.

Vincent nodded to Nanaki, who flicked one ear in greeting. The guardian was listening, mouth open slightly as he scented the air. Already beginning to suspect. Vincent led Yuffie to a chair, and stood behind her, waiting.

Cloud entered next. He stood before them, silently, until Reno snapped, "Spit it out, Strife. What'd you find?" Tifa threw him a look that promised injury, fist clenching by her knee. Cloud held Reno's gaze for a few moments before he began.

"It wasn't a wasted trip. Vincent was right to call us. But I'm not gonna lie—" Here he paused, ran a hand through his hair. Vincent saw Nanaki stiffen as Cid's raised voice filtered through the door. "What we found only confuses things more."

Barret smacked his open palm against the sofa. "Damn it, Spike—"

"It's probably better just to get it over with," Aeris suggested, peeking through the door. Heavy feet on the gravel path behind her and then Cid slammed into the room and grabbed Cloud roughly by the shoulder. Shera trailed a few feet behind, looking harassed.

"You got some kinda fuckin' _explanation_ for this—"

"Sit _down_ , Cid," Tifa snarled, saintly patience worn thin, and then Sephiroth stood framed in the doorway and everyone froze.

Chaos woke. Vincent's pupils flared.

Rude's hand first, then Reno's; it was the work of milliseconds to deliver blows that numbed hands and arms with the side of his gauntlet. He was moving again before Aeris began to raise her hands, eyes wide in protest at the threatened violence. Barret was harder, but slow, and already impeded by Tifa - he helped her lift the grafted arm back and upward, winced at the crackle of energy down his side. Elena bore down on her trigger—

" _STOP_ ," Vincent snarled with the voice of Chaos, his blood pounding in his ears to the beat of both their hearts.

The room stilled around him. Gradually, he became aware of the near-silent struggle of Tifa and Barret, both hissing curses under their breaths; the tinkle of plaster falling from holes in his ceiling or walls; the low, normal animal growl of Nanaki.

"Weapons down," Cloud said firmly. "He's not a threat. Not right now."

Vincent straightened as weapons were grudgingly stowed, his own still a rippling snarl beneath his skin. He resumed his stance beside Yuffie, trying to ignore the wideness of her eyes. The medication, he assured himself. She knew he was no threat to her.

Not right now.

* * *

The flower girl shook her head when Cloud pointed her to a seat. "There's no point," she said. "I don't have enough to tell you."

For being recently dead, she looked damn fine to Reno's eyes. She might've lost an inch or two of inviting curve, a few shades of her peaches-and-cream complexion, but he was unashamed to say he would still tap that in a heartbeat.

Well, mostly unashamed.

"Tell them what you told us," Tifa said. "Then we can get cleaned up." The flower girl bobbed her head, the hint of a frown on her face.

"I had been... dreaming, I suppose. Adrift in the Lifestream, touching a hundred thousand other minds. I don't know when I started to come back to myself again, but the Planet... woke me nearly six days ago." She took a deep, shuddering breath, answering Reno's silent question as to whether the Planet had also woken a floatation device. "I could still hear her, but the Planet speaks very slowly, so I could hear that... above her, there was another voice. It was barely a whisper, but it was calling for me — for anyone."

Rude's head barely moved, but Reno traced his gaze to Valentine. The ex-Turk's frown grew slightly deeper, but other than that he made no reaction.

"I followed it," The flower girl continued. "I couldn't sleep, so I followed the whisper. When the snow was too thick, I tried to speak to the Planet about why she had woken me, but all I could see was... creatures. Violent and powerful, but somehow... small. Like angry children throwing toys. It never got clearer, but every time she pushed me toward the voice.

"It grew stronger the closer I got to the Crater, until I finally started to realise what it was. Who it was." She paused, twisted to see Sephiroth. "You weren't awake, when I told Cloud before. Do you remember what you were calling for?"

The General — there was no simmering madness in this Sephiroth's eyes, only puzzlement and weary calculation — shook his head. "I recall the area, but I have no knowledge of these events." Precise, clipped. The flower girl did not seem surprised.

"The Planet woke me so that I could wake him. It's not anything I'd... normally be capable of. I'm sure she could have woken him herself, except..."

"Except that we'd have taken him out again, no questions asked," Cloud said. Barret muttered something in sullen agreement behind him. "We needed you to convince us. Why?"

Aeris shook her head, spread her hands helplessly. "I wish I knew. All I can tell is that something isn't quite right. The Planet is still weak. She's not the way she's meant to be. I think she needs us to set things right."

"You're telling me the Planet woke you — and him — from the dead so we could run errands?" Reno couldn't stop himself from snorting. "I don't know if you've heard, princess, but we have problems a little closer to home."

"I know about Reeve," Aeris said. "And Godo. I don't know if it helps, but Midgar and Wutai... Wutai especially... were shifting. Getting dimmer. I sensed that much before I woke." She put her hands together in her lap and hunched her shoulders as if suddenly cold. "I don't know that the events are connected, but I suspect they are. We need to find them."

If they're still there to find, Reno finished for her.

"I think that's enough for tonight," Tifa suggested, obviously sensing the same sentiment. "If the Turks aren't sick of Wutaian takeout yet, there's a place down by the equipment shop. We can start fresh in the morning. Barret, you're the best at juggling shopping bags..."

Within a few minutes she had packed the gunman off with Highwind and his old lady in tow, and the flower girl was halfway up the stairs being led toward a hot shower. Valentine, at a nod from Strife, got Kisaragi on her feet and headed for the kitchen.

Lana cleared her throat. "...if it's all the same, sir, I don't think I'm fit for what you're about to discuss." The faint hint of a tremor in her voice made Reno agree with her. Not that any of them really were. He jerked his head in Valentine's direction and she hastened after him.

Sephiroth stood in their midst, waiting. Cloud exhaled slowly.

"You say you don't remember, and I believe you," he said, "But that's more worrisome than you might think. I need two people with you at all times. Is that going to be a problem?"

The General's green eyes narrowed subtly. "According to Ms Gainsborough, you're speaking to a corpse. Until I understand or recall how that came to be, you are welcome to do as you wish."

"Right." Cloud turned his attention to the rest of them. "Right now, there are only six of us I trust to watch him without making things worse. You three, Vincent, and Tifa. I'm up for first watch."

"I'll join you," Elena cut in before Reno could open his mouth. He shot her a look, which she returned evenly, chin lifting stubbornly. "All due respect, sir, you haven't slept right in days."

"You want me to start now?" He'd have laughed if he'd thought he could stop once he started. "Done. I was never much good as a babysitter."

He beckoned her over as Strife started on about the next shift — Valentine and Rude, and Reno couldn't tell if Rude had sagged with relief or disappointment. He lowered his voice and turned his head so the General couldn't see or hear his words. "You sure you'll be okay with this?"

Elena's eyes were dark with purpose, her jaw tight. He hadn't seen her so closed down for years.

Two years.

"Laney?"

She saluted, and smiled grimly. "Let you know, sir."

* * *

Tifa knocked twice before she stuck her hand around the bathroom door. "Elena had a spare. She's about the closest to your size."

"I think I'm closer to Yuffie's size now," Aeris complained. Tifa suppressed a smile, rolled her eyes, and leaned against the wall beside the door.

"Poor _thing_ ," she said. "Imagine having a _normal_ chest size! I don't know how you bear it."

"Oh— _you_ —" Aeris emerged in a haze of steam, half-dressed, hands on hips, and flung her wet towel at the laughing martial artist. She held the expression of righteous indignation for nearly four seconds before snorting in a most un-lady-like fashion and grabbing Tifa in a surprisingly bony hug.

Tifa rested her forehead against Aeris' damp hair and squeezed Aeris' cool shoulders. "It's good to have you back," she said. "I've missed you."

Aeris' eyes twinkled up at her merrily. "I haven't. I've been watching you. And Cloud. In the shower." She waggled her eyebrows as Tifa turned bright red. "Hah! I _knew_ it!"

"You little _cheat_ ," Tifa whisper-shrieked, completely mortified and unable to keep the smirk from her face. She grabbed Aeris' head through the towel with both hands and noogied the laughing flower girl until she submitted, both hands raised in surrender. Then, gentling her motions, she started to towel Aeris' hair.

Aeris sighed happily and leaned into the motion, apparently perfectly comfortable in little more than underwear (Tifa had no illusions about her spare shorts) even in the chilly Nibel air. The towel was saturated before she was even halfway done, slick chestnut running in rivulets across her lap. "Is this going to get in your way?"

Aeris shrugged, taking part of the mess over her shoulder and massaging the towel through it. "I think it'll all go back for the moment. If you're offering home haircuts, though, I can think of someone who needs it worse than I do."

Tifa's lips pursed as she combed her fingers through the hair, dividing it for a braid without really thinking about it. "I don't know how he'd feel about someone else holding scissors," she said at last, the most neutral remark she could think of, and Aeris twisted to face her sadly.

"You don't like it."

Tifa rocked her head from side to side, not quite meeting Aeris' eyes. "I'm uncomfortable," she agreed. "It's all a little hard to believe. You back. Him back, like nothing ever went wrong, when I still have dreams sometimes—"

Aeris took first her left hand, then her right, rubbing cool, soothing circles with her thumbs. Tifa stared at nothing meditatively, not realising at first what her eyes were focused on. Then she sucked in her breath in a hiss, touched her fingers to Aeris' bare stomach. "Do you need something on that?"

Aeris looked down as if she had forgotten, both hands moving to cover the wound on her belly. Tifa pulled her forward to peer over her shoulder, bit her lip at a matching injury, only three or four inches long, in the middle of Aeris' back. Neither bled, but both were newly-healed enough that their edges were still raised, layers of skin flaking away to either side. Aeris wouldn't meet her eyes, and Tifa was seized with sudden suspicion. Her fingers tightened, and the shoulder under them felt colder the harder she gripped.

"It wouldn't help, would it? They'll stay like that." She gave a choked laugh that might have been a sob. "You're not really—"

"I've lived my life," Aeris said softly. She brushed back her hair with one hand and grimaced as shreds of old skin came away on her fingertips. "But I'm needed. Some skill of the Ancients must be required, some intercession by the Planet— I don't know. But no. I won't be here forever. Neither will he."

"Does Cloud know?"

Aeris' hesitation was enough. Tifa swallowed.

"I can't keep this from him. But it's not my place to say," she said carefully. Aeris nodded.

"I'll tell him," she said. "Just as soon as I figure out how."

* * *

[Day 9, 0029 Cosmo Candle Time]

"Hah _hah_!" Reeve chuckled as Ayuki's PHS paused mid-boot and reverted to a simple command line interface, green text lurid against the black backdrop. "Just a few minutes more and we'll be in business."

Feather smiled vaguely in his direction. Whatever had happened in the submarine bay had left her exhausted, though the GPS didn't seem to mean much to her even as she recovered. She sat hunched around her knees, as if stricken with cold much deeper than that of the badly-aired building.

Painstakingly, he began entering commands, starting up services, reaching out to IP addresses he had long ago learned by heart. The signal here was weak — he'd seen that before he rooted the device — but that should only slow him down, not prevent him entirely.

"Any minute," he promised them both, and waited for the signal to travel.


	12. Fetch

[Day 9, 0233 Nibel Standard Time]

Reno was still staring at the ceiling when Cait's generator spun up, and the sudden yellow witchlight made him jump. No chittering or sudden movement, and the eyes were dim — just a small number of subsystems online, Reno surmised, and frowned.

He waited for a few minutes to see if any other movement would be forthcoming, but Cait seemed content to flicker at the edge of Reno's vision and make sleep even more difficult. He huffed, rolled over, and mashed the other side of his face into his pillow.

One more day of this and he'd start taking Kisaragi up on her suggestion of herbal tea. He felt like there was double-sided tape between his eyeballs and his eyelids.

He had so many covers over his head that he almost didn't notice the low grind of his GPS. It lasted a second, maybe two, and then lay still. He squinted at it, waiting for the ring to kick in, but nothing happened.

He wondered if he had managed to fall asleep, and was just dreaming about being woken up by this shit. The GPS display was no help, spitting up a low signal error — no shit, Reno thought; welcome to Nibelheim — and no clue of a call, missed or otherwise. He put it down, closed his eyes, and forced himself to relax, to ignore the rhythmic flare of Cait's eyes, Wallace's fuckin' snoring, the wind howling through the town on its way down off the mountains, the creaks and groans of a house destined to be haunted—

Cait whirred suddenly to full alert with a burst of carnival music and a spatter of whirling lights that nearly gave him heart failure. He rolled, nearly fell off the tiny little bed in his fury, and hissed, "What the _fuck_ —“ before he noticed the other sound: Cait's printer. The Moogle's had been in his mouth; the new Sith units contrived to pull messages from their sleeves, so a thin strip of paper was spooling from Cait's right paw, lit to neon yellow by his glowing eyes.

"He's at the servers," Cait muttered. "Hurry now, lad. Wake Cloud."

Reno craned forward to see, and his mouth went dry.

” _Elena_ ,” he snapped, and the girl was instantly upright, though not entirely alert. Meltzer had jerked awake behind her. "Strife and Highwind, right now." His tone was enough; neither asked questions or paused to don an over-shirt.

* * *

Reno had a paper streamer as long as he was tall by the time Strife and Highwind got to the kitchen, Elena following behind with her bare arms wrapped around her middle. Sephiroth, Rude and Valentine had been at the far end of the table, reading, playing Solitaire, and maintaining weaponry respectively, but now the attention of all three was focused on the head of the table and the animatronic cat perched there.

"Signal's too weak, he couldna get sound through, but he's managed bytecode," Cait reported as soon as Cloud was in earshot. "He's nowt harmed, but nowt safe either. Says there's some kinda ice magic at play, _powerful_ ice magic."

"More importantly, as long as the connection's up, we have coordinates," Reno interrupted. "I'll need a lift from Highwind to Junon—"

"He's in Junon?" Elena asked, sounding bewildered. "We have people all over Junon, there's no way—"

"—because we need a sub to get into this place, let me finish a fuckin' sentence, Elena."

Strife glanced to Highwind. "How long do you need?"

The pilot blinked a few times. "'f I get tea and the wind's right for Sierra, twenty minutes."

"Practically solid with two sugars, right?" Elena was already moving, leaving Lana in the doorjamb.

"Junon's subs are the old Gammas," she said. "Any of you trained?"

"You just volunteered yourself, Meltzer." Reno jerked a thumb upward. "Go find a shirt and start thinking about who in Junon'll have cold weather gear on short notice." She nodded, and vanished.

Cloud glanced at Rude. "Guess I'll take your shift. I'd send a few more along, but..."

"Reckon the cat's about all we can stand," Reno agreed. With the hell he was going to give Reeve's kidnappers, babysitting the General was gonna be a fuckin' cakewalk.

* * *

[Day 9, 0700 Nibel Standard Time]

"I find it difficult to believe that President Shinra has been taken hostage and I am to have no part in his recovery," Sephiroth sniped over his hand.

"Not President Shinra, _the_ President _of_ Shinra," Yuffie responded, exasperation plain. Her hand threatened to escape her fingers, bloated with a recent acquisition of the discard pile.

Vincent laid four Queens neatly to his right, and discarded a four of clubs. "Deathblow. When your memory returns, you will understand." Yuffie gaped.

” _How_ are you out of cards already?"

He shrugged. "Turk."

"Some limited information about the world's current state would not completely shatter my _delicate_ mind, I hope," Sephiroth continued pointedly. When neither AVALANCHE member appeared to have any intention of enlightening him, he leaned back in his chair and scowled at the ceiling as though it had done him a personal wrong. "If I cannot have a moment's peace and I cannot have information, then—"

"Any lunch goin'?" Barret's expression froze as he caught sight of Sephiroth. Yuffie jumped up from her seat, shedding cards left and right. Behind her, Sephiroth narrowed his eyes at the mess and began to sweep them into order.

"I think Aeris went to find the bakery, but there's still cereal and a bit of last night's chicken..."

"You takin' over inventory, brat, or you been takin' advantage of proximity?" Barret tousled her hair and glanced back at the table. Stiffly, he added, "Anyone else? Cawfee?"

Vincent shook his head minutely. Sephiroth squared the cards on the tabletop and made an almost identical motion.

"Uncanny, isn't it," Yuffie stage-whispered. Barret didn't respond, so she trailed him into the kitchen. "Is it still creepy and gross down there?"

"I'll say it is," Barret muttered, "and havin' that kid up here with his snake eyes ain't helpin' none."

"He's actually been pretty cool." Yuffie swung herself lightly up onto the bench, legs dangling. "I think he's letting me win at cards, though."

"Y'ain't bothered?"

"By hanging around with two men who're prettier than me? Naw. I have the best boobs," she confided. Barret, groping for remnants of Tifa's fried chicken, snorted. "Hey, hey, people have to _eat_ that, and Vincent's not civilised enough for cello-wrap. Are there wings left? I love wings."

"We all know you love wings," Barret grunted around most of a chicken quarter. "'s why there ain't none."

"I am a wing ninja," she admitted, slipping down off the bench. "Give my regards to the dust monsters, and tell the Yin Yang I will soon be back in his arms. ...maybe just tell Yin. Yang is happy anyway."

"Don't know how you stay so damn chipper in this place, even when it's all gussied up like this," Barret muttered on his way out. Yuffie struck a pose.

Then she went back to the table and resumed her struggle against the suicidal urge to ask Sephiroth what he remembered of the Wutai War.

* * *

[Day 9, 1145 Midgar Standard Time]

The graveyard shift hadn't been happy to stir from their posts, but by the time they touched down there was a relay team of buggies to get them from the air strip to the submarine bay in a hurry. Just as well, Reno thought, because whatever storms Wutai might be having, the Junon night was hot and still, full of the sound of everyone else's air conditioning.

There was no luggage on the carts apart from their own; the warm weather gear was already packed and the sub prepped thanks to the quick, orderly thinking of a scout Meltzer called Joffer. Reno cocked an eyebrow at Rude.

Rude's mouth quirked downward, his eyebrows raising minutely, and Reno shrugged in reply. Scouts never wanted promotion. Not until they lost enough extremities to warrant a desk job, anyway.

The Gammas were hunks of junk to Reno's eye, but then he'd never had a particular affinity for machines, and Junon sure as hell wasn't kind to them. Meltzer seemed happy enough, whistling softly and nudging Joffer with her elbow. "Nice job. They're looking great."

"Just try to bring this one back in one piece," the scout responded. He tugged at a sandy forelock. "It's the Commander's. He don't use it much, but I'd hate to have a cadet up there to tell him the Turks had ruined his favourite sub."

Meltzer laughed and surged up the side, bare arms gleaming in the spotlights. "I'll do my best." She flicked her fingers at him, and vanished. Elena followed, and Rude trailed her, cautious with a new collection of cables to fit the sub's ports.

Reno nodded to the scout. "Good work tonight."

"Thankyou, sir." Joffer saluted. "Good luck."

* * *

[Day 9, 1100 Nibel Standard Time]

"I'm not saying you should let him run wild in the streets of Nibelheim," Aeris said, hands on hips. "Just give him something to do."

"You really want him down here?" Cloud slapped the report he'd been reading onto the desk. "Reading records of just how full of mako they shot his mother before she started to hallucinate? How he showed advanced strength before he outweighed an apple? You think that'll go any better the second time around?"

"I didn't _say_ that," Aeris' fists balled at her sides, and Tifa interrupted before she could continue.

"You don't want him bored, either," she said. "Not here. Make him part of our guard rotation. You can keep two people with him, and bring whoever's on the door down here to help out."

Cloud was unmoved. "That leaves Red and Yuffie either resting or on Sephiroth duty." They had determined early on that for all her determination to find her father, Yuffie was more harm than help in the research department.

Tifa moved around the bookcase and set her folders down with finality. "Yuffie," she said, "can handle herself in situations that would leave Midgan teenagers weeping. I think she can handle a little time with an amnesiac and a bookshelf."

Cloud opened his mouth to say, _An amnesiac responsible for murdering her mother,_ and remembered who he was talking to. Took a deep breath through his nose. Tifa watched him, lips pursed, as he worked his shoulders.

"If you think you can convince Barret, be my guest."

* * *

[Day 9, 1430 Cosmo Candle Time]

Paranoia kept Reeve moving, albeit slowly, with eyes half-closed against the light. They drifted between unused staff bathrooms, staying as close to the building's perimeter as they could, and waited to hear from the Turks. Logically, Reeve knew it would be another hour at best, but the PHS seemed to have rewakened hope, and with it, impatience.

Feather now seemed to move at a brisk trot compared to Reeve's gradual stagger. Thin as she was, after five days with nothing but water in his stomach, Reeve was coming to realise that she was almost supernaturally healthy. She moved with the economy of a dancer, not sluggish or reluctant as he had first thought, but careful — aware of how few resources she had left to expend. Had he realised that days ago, he might have stuffed his pockets with ration packs they'd discovered instead of leaving them with the girl.

He was trying not to be bitter, but the hunger made it difficult. The hunger made it difficult to do anything.

He only realised that Feather had stopped when his questing hand encountered the back of her arm. She didn't flinch, but spoke in a whisper: "I feel her."

Reeve forced his eyes open. "Where?"

Feather raised an arm, gestured behind them and to the right. Reeve thought it through, hairs rising slowly on the back of his neck.

"She'll box us in." There was no way out of it, either — if she was closer to the center of the building, Ayuki would always be able to move more quickly. Their only hope was to keep her travelling the longest possible path.

He tugged Feather's elbow. "The stairs. We need to get up as high as possible, then come back down a different way." He needed height. He needed signal.

And then, he needed Turks.

* * *

[Day 9, 2200 Nibel Standard Time]

Elena watched the monitors past Lana's elbow, fingers assembling and dismantling the Glock without her supervision. Nothing to see on the cam but faint dark shapes, but according to the instruments, the sea floor was angling up again. Ancient columns dotted the radar. Sometimes a spire showed in the spotlight and she had to suppress a smile that something so delicate could not only withstand the currents for decades, but pose a serious threat to their hull integrity.

Rude sat cross-legged on the floor to her left, eyes presumably closed. His broad brown hands draped gracefully over each knee, revealing nothing of the tension Elena spotted in his jaw, his lower back. Across from him, Reno jigged his foot, absent and restless as his hands performed a similar mindless dance along the mag rod. Fire and Lightning materia glittered green along its length, the flicker in their depths matching the sparks kindling in his eyes as he prepped them, one by one, over and over.

Cait was jacked almost obscenely into the interfaces to Lana's left, eschewing the control panel for direct access through the plate underneath. His ears twitched back and forth, frenetically searching for any anomalous activity around them, anything that might point the way to his master.

His ears pricked suddenly forward. Something whirred, blipped. Elena sat forward, the Glock forgotten. Beside her, the silent shift in mood that meant Rude was paying attention.

Muffled, gasping breathing filled the cabin, and Cait said, "You're on, boss."

"How— how far?" Reeve sounded destroyed, exhausted. Elena glanced at the screens again, but Lana answered first.

"Fifteen minutes and closing."

"Who— Meltzer?" A startled huff of laughter that became a wheezing cough. "We'll head for the south-east corner, but she's on our heels, and I can't— I don't know how much longer I can run. There's no doors—"

"Save your breath." Rude's assurance didn't need to be spoken. Reeve huffed a laugh that crackled over the speakers, and then he was gone again.

Elena flinched at a sharp pain in her ankle. She glanced down to dab at the bright, bloody crescents she had left there. When she looked up again, Reno — still elbow-deep in the armoury compartment — shoved a case toward her with a foot.

She read the numbers on it. Blinked. Then grinned, resisting the urge to rub her hands together.

By the time the ocean floor became visible on the cam, the Glock was back in its holster, all but forgotten.

* * *

Reeve needed his whole weight to hold the door open, and the door handle to remain upright. After so many stairs, his legs felt like plastic sacks filled with gelatine. If the sharp burn of each muscle in his thighs and buttocks hadn't been so clearly defined, he might have believed someone had hit him with a rogue Transform.

Feather had his sleeve again, attempting to tug him onward. She had gained a flush that in her pale skin looked like the bright rose of fever, but she didn't seem to tire the same way he did, despite her waifish build.

He stumbled as she pulled him away from the door and settled into a run again, limbs pumping smoothly. Reeve could barely keep up a shambling jog. He understood, now, what they said about running being comparable to falling forward — it was just a matter of getting his legs under himself again in time, and pushing off to fall again.

He felt his breath freeze, a thousand tiny pinpricks down his neck, ricocheting off the front of his shirt. The hair on his arms stood. The ache behind his temples, at the corner of his jaw, grew to a sharp throb.

It looked like Ayuki didn't need the materia torque.

Feather stared, half-hidden behind a corner, mouthing words he couldn't hear or understand. The corner. The south-east corner. He staggered around it, looked back to see hoarfrost chasing their footprints. Beyond, Ayuki strode, limbs encrusted with ice crystals tinged a pale blue.

Reeve fumbled the PHS out of his pocket, and thumbed it, invisibly, behind the corner. "M-m-mark. _Ma-ark_.”

Answering static; he couldn't tell what. The PHS slipped from his numb fingers, bounced off the frozen leather of his shoe and skidded out into the corridor. Plain sight. No point now. He let Feather tug him back a few steps, a few more before his knees gave out again. Not far enough. He skittered backward on white hands, blue fingernails, counting the yards and praying to whatever was listening.

Ayuki turned the corner. She sneered at the PHS, and made a sharp motion with one hand; the cheap plastic casing shattered the moment her ice struck. Then her eyes fixed on Reeve.

She raised her arms and the world exploded.

* * *

Elena kept the rocket launcher trained on the structure even as she began readying her rifle, armed with an elemental orb and a truly bitchin' Fire materia, if she did say so herself. Reno and Rude landed on the rocky beach at the same moment so that only one impact made its way back to her ears.

"Hold for visual." Elena squinted through binoculars and flicked into and out of thermal vision. The rubble was still too hot to make it useful.

The wind carved dust and smoke from the crumpled wall in long swathes, revealing concrete rubble and twisted support beams protruding from the cladding. The dying flickers of electrical wires made it look like a small thundercloud had wedged itself into the structure to huddle against the cold. In its midst... movement.

"Two unsubs, possibly more. Begin approach."

Reno and Rude started up the beach, typical bravado giving way to a cautious game of cover leapfrog. Elena kept her eyes and her rifle trained on the smoking ruin of a wall until the people in it were clearly visible.

"Looks like the President brought a friend. Approach with caution." They'd learned not to trust to appearances the hard way, after all.

But if this Reeve were an ice sculpture, it was a much more lifelike specimen; he sagged visibly when he spotted them, and even from here she could see the breadth of his grin, and the weight and muscle he'd lost in captivity. He didn't jog toward them — from the sound of their infrequent radio transmissions, he'd done enough of that — but there was a definite spring in his step as he extended a hand to his companion and stumbled with her over the rocks toward Reno and Rude.

" _Looks like we have a girlfriend,_ " Reno drawled. " _Keep an eye on that building, 'Lena. It's getting damn cold down here and the Boss doesn't like it._ "

The wind had picked up, too, spreading pale smoke out from the destruction. Fire in the rubble, she reasoned, but she didn't like the way her fingers and lips were numbing under gloves and mask, or the way the smoke seemed to be dogging their steps across the uneven ground.

She settled behind the rifle, fingertips spread to touch the Fire materia, the Barrier, and the Haste. "I don't like that smoke."

" _Ain't smoke,_ " Reno's voice came back flatly. " _Mist._ "

"Mist?" Elena wondered aloud, staring at the water vapour that seemed to creep and pool amid the rocks. If she squinted right, she could almost make out—

* * *

" _Unsub, unsub, on your six._ " Elena's voice rapped out, sharp enough that Reeve didn't need a headset. Rude's broad back blocked his view when he turned toward the complex. He peeked around his bodyguard and found that he'd stepped in front of Feather the same way half a breath later.

Icy mist swirled around a figure nearly twice as tall as a human, clinging to — no, coalescing _into_ arms and hands. Liquid nitrogen hair twisted in the air behind her, coiling in a non-existent breeze.

Reno said something Reeve had specifically programmed out of the Sith units and raised the nightstick at Shiva. "Get going, boss." The creak of Rude's gloves and the shimmer of Reflect followed the words.

Reeve reached out for Feather's hand and tugged her toward the sub.

Shiva's mist chased them across rocks and waterborne debris encrusted with ice crystals. Warmth and chill passed over his skin and he felt his heartrate leap, his chest tighten; Haste let him glance toward Elena without breaking an ankle for his gratitude, but she had already moved on to aiming something _ridiculous_ at the ice goddess, something with a gaping maw for a barrel that steamed faintly in the frigid air.

He pulled Feather down to her knees as Elena launched four massive fireballs, hissed under his breath at the pain of rocks and ice on knees and palms. Hissed again in surprise as the ice coating the rocks began to creep over his fingertips.

He wrenched his hands away from the hungry ice, leaving behind shreds of skin and most of a nail and breathing in harsh grunts through the pain of it. Feather's knees were bleeding through her stockings when he pushed her up the side of the sub ahead of him. He hooked his wrists around the stiles to avoid getting blood on them.

Feather reached for him as soon as he crested the ladder. Her hands clutched at his shirt, but her pale eyes were focused on the battle, pupils dilated and twitching with Haste. Elena swore and the miniature cannon fired again, four distinct blasts — Reeve twisted to watch them stream toward Shiva, gaped as the ice goddess crouched and spun, arms out wide, and the fireballs careened off into the building behind her. Feather's hands patting at his chest, his pockets; the streak of red hair that was Reno scrambling on frozen rock; the realization that Haste had taken too much from him as the blackness at the edges of his vision closed in.

He caught a flash of crimson light, felt Feather push away, heard her hit the rocky beach at a dead run even as Elena screamed for them all to get back to the sub. He felt the sub freezing on his palms, his chest. His eyes rolled to focus on Feather as she slammed her hands together, fingertips trailing crimson light that flashed bright between her palms.

Mist streamed from Shiva to surround Feather, twining around her feet and calves, her hips and away from the goddess, whose form drained to vapour. The outline of her face twisted with rage and betrayal and then vanished, destroyed by the wind. The mist that remained seeped into Feather, who swayed once and then crumpled on the rocks.

He saw Rude and Reno hesitate, managed a garbled order, and then the sound of Elena relaying it followed him into the dark.

* * *

[Day 10, 0045 Nibel Standard Time]

"—ng around."

"You've said that nineteen times so far. I've _counted_.”

A theatrical gasp. "Reno, congratulations! You never told me you'd mastered counting past ten!"

Reeve snorted, and just like that everything hurt. His palms burned against the rough blanket, and beneath that sharper pain everything else felt strained, grazed, or bruised. His lungs ached, and his stomach—

"Easy, boss." Reno peered at him, the faint mako gleam of his eyes reassuring pinpoints in a blur. "We've got you on fluid and we're not more than a few hours out of Junon now."

Reeve felt his shoulder being squeezed and wished his hands weren't too raw to squeeze back. "Feather?" His voice sounded like he'd been eating chalk.

"Your lady friend? She's doing fine. Better shape than you, actually, which means you oughta be sleeping. Anything you need?"

Reeve thought about it.

"Pizza," he said. "With the cheese crust. And a milkshake."

Reno laughed, and Reeve felt a light prick in the back of his hand. "Maybe the milkshake."

" _Two_ milkshakes," Reeve said, but blackness claimed him before he could ask for fries.

* * *


	13. Revenant

[Day 10, 0610 Nibel Standard Time]

Aeris found Barret wedged in the window of the greenhouse, PHS crammed against one ear, and cupped hand over the other as he fought Nibelheim's natural aversion to reception. "Uh huh," he said, sounding dubious, and then more fiercely, "Baby girl, what I tell you about that?" The furrow in his brow eased slightly when he spotted her, and he jerked his chin in greeting.

She took a seat at the low stone bench and propped her chin on her hands, green eyes soft and warm as she watched the gunman speaking to his daughter. Never gentler than when he was around her; never fiercer than when he was protecting her; never more grateful than to those who kept her safe.

She wasn't sure which would apply in this situation, but she had an inkling.

"All right, baby girl," he said at last. "You give Momma 'Myra a big hug and a kiss from me, and then you go wash up. Remember to do your readin' before bed." He waited. Aeris couldn't understand Marlene's piping recitation from where she sat, but the words were easy to guess when she looked at Barret's grin. "Love you, too, baby."

"Sorry to interrupt," she said, when the PHS was safely clipped into his vest.

"Naw." Barret waved his good hand. "'m I on shift next?"

"No. I... I need to ask you something." Aeris' fingers twisted in her lap. "About Sephiroth."

Barret's mouth, open on some invitation, closed abruptly.

"I know it must seem crazy to you, but I can't help but think he's just as much a victim in all this as any of us." She could see he was struggling to contain a vehement disagreement from the swelling of his shoulders, the pinching at the corners of his mouth, and she hurried on before he had the chance to begin voicing it. "I think a show of trust will do a world of good, and Cloud said that if you agreed, we could put him on guard duty."

"Spike got a memory like a _goddamn_ tea strainer," Barret snarled. "Maybe you forgot or maybe you just didn't get a good eyeful like the rest of us, but that psycho gave you one hell of a belly button ring. I ain't about to let him do it again -- or to any of the rest of us." The PHS creaked in his grip. "Far as I'm concerned, you're lucky he ain't woke up with a hole through his head."

" _Barret_ ," Aeris hissed, appalled. "If _anyone_ has the right to forgive Sephiroth for--"

There was a muffled thud from the hall. Aeris froze mid-tirade, head whipping toward the door. Missing Score whirred in response to Barret's sudden tension, and he laid his hand along it as if he could quell his own nerves like a twitchy wolfhound.

The boards in the corridor creaked, uneasy, and Aeris darted to the door just as Sephiroth's hesitance became solid forward motion. She glimpsed the tip of his braid flicking in the air above the staircase, and then it was gone. 

He was gone.

White-faced, she pressed her fingers to her lips and leaned against the door jamb.

"Thankyou, Barret," she said faintly. "Never mind."

* * *

[Day 10, 0625 Nibel Standard Time]

The sub's steel exoskeleton creaked and groaned as the craft crawled south and the water warmed around it. Most of its occupants dozed fitfully, the near-silence unsettling after a lifetime on or under the plate. Only the pilot was fully awake, though she had spent the last few hours wishing dearly for a radio channel.

Lana's stub nails _ting_ ed occasionally on the console -- they were close enough to Junon now that they were coming into territory familiar from simulations and training runs in her academy days. The sea floor had changed a bit since then, especially along the path the Weapon had taken from the Crater, but they were nowhere near that deep. Nothing to do but hurry up and wait for Junon Harbour to blip into existence on her screens.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard dull footsteps behind her, swivelled sharply in the chair. The pale girl from the deep sea facility was taking slow, deliberate steps, her head slightly lifted toward the left side of the sub's ceiling. Her pale, blank eyes and the slackness to her expression made Lana think of slum junkies, following the ghostly impressions of people that still clung to the mako they'd injected.

"Hey, there. Something wrong?"

The girl didn't even blink. Lana firmed her jaw.

"Hey, honey," she said, coming to her feet and circling to her left, so Feather could still see her and her raised palms. "Y'all right? You're freaking me out a little."

"He's awake," the girl said, faint as an echo.

Lana's eyes flickered sideways to Reeve (out cold), to Reno (snuffling), back to Rude's inscrutable sunglasses, and grimaced at the hairs rising on the back of her hands.

"Who's that, sugar?" she asked, and had to strain to catch the word whispered, faint as breath:

"Odin."

* * *

[Day 10, 0625 Nibel Standard Time]

Yuffie was bored enough that she was laying the foundations for a book fort when she heard Barret's dulcet tones rumbling through the building. Enough walls between him and her that she couldn't make out a word of it; his usual frustrated incoherence, or the manor's tendency to chew up sound and spit out creepy, she didn't know.

The voice that rose alongside Barret's was nowhere near as loud, but every bit as strident. Yuffie was on her feet and wiping dusty fingers on her shorts before she finished wondering what Aeris would be shouting about.

The day was pale and grey, the watery light filtering down from sullen clouds bright, but ineffectual. Sephiroth stood at the top of the stairs, gazing upward at the stained glass window. His hands were fists at his sides. The light gave his pale hair a ghostly brilliance. He didn't move or make any comment as she slipped past, and she'd have pulled his hair or rifled his pockets, but he was Sephiroth, so she left him alone.

Later, she'd thank Ashura for that.

She heard Barret's low boom -- quieter, abashed -- as she descended the stairs, and met them in what Vincent called the recital room and Cid called the room with that godawful pianer. Aeris was paler than death, and she didn't even smile when Yuffie said so. "I could hear you two from the other end of the _mansion_ ," she said, hands on hips, and the fact that Barret chose to grimace rather than retort said this was _worse_ , not just _bad_. "What happened?"

"I asked Barret about putting Sephiroth on watch," Aeris said. "Sephiroth overheard."

"Oh. ... _oh._ " Yuffie thought of the fists clenched at Sephiroth's sides and the eerily calm expression on his face, and felt icicles sprouting in the pit of her stomach. "I passed him on my way down. He didn't..."

"He didn't look so good," Aeris finished. Yuffie nodded. "We need to talk to him. Calm him down."

"You first, sister," Yuffie retorted, but she was first down the corridor, straining her hearing, straining to keep her footsteps light and remember where the creaky boards were ( _everywhere_ ) when she gained the entrance hall and swore softly under her breath.

The stained glass roses still glittered, but Sephiroth was gone.

* * *

Vincent only heard the voices when he shut the shower off. The creak and ring of the old pipes masked the words, but they could not detract from the sudden stillness in the house when the argument stopped.

He towelled and dressed himself swiftly, twisting his hair into a long, sopping tail down his back. The tiled panel at the end of the bath concealed Lariat and Peacemaker; he lifted the revolver from its bed and laid the lid of the compartment without sound. He broke, loaded, and after a moment's consideration left the safety on. The house was rarely this quiet, even with only himself inside it, but perhaps the wind had tired.

_Perhaps the mountains bow._

The hall was empty; he cracked the door to the entrance hall and heard Barret's heavy footsteps immediately before he caught sight of Yuffie, unarmed but clearly wary. He pushed the door back far enough that she could see him and raised a brow when she tensed.

She beckoned, eyes on the stairs, teeth worrying at her lip. Vincent slid from the shadows of the hall just as Aeris and Barret emerged from the southern hall at a jog.

"Problem?"

"Sephiroth knows," Aeris said. No more was required.

"He was upstairs?"

"He was looking at the glass," Yuffie confirmed. "Could be anywhere, but he started in the south hall and went up, so..."

Vincent nodded. He'd head for the lab if he were lucid. If not, his memories would likely lead him there in any case. And for him to disappear so swiftly... "Go."

Yuffie was first on the stairs, Vincent and Barret covering her. Aeris followed until they reached the stained glass windows, and then hesitated. "You might need..."

Vincent jerked his head, telling her to follow, and drew Yuffie back behind him. He and Barret cleared the corner and a section of hall, and then Vincent traced his finger from the edge of a window sill and slammed his brass fingertips through the facade. Plaster shattered, white dust clinging to his slacks, as he twisted the claw and wrenched the panel aside.

Buntine gleamed alongside a trio of armlets and a row of high-level materia he generally preferred to avoid. He gestured to Aeris and Yuffie, knowing by the gleam in her eye that the ninja would spend the rest of her life tapping at his walls and not particularly caring. Peacemaker was still cool beneath his fingers, but there was time. He hoped there was time.

Barret was eyeing him with something like awe when he pressed the panel closed. "You got many of those?"

_One in every room._ "A few."

He didn't need to tell them to move on. Yuffie took the lead again, then Vincent, bare feet inaudible on the boards. She saw the mirror and slipped quickly beneath it; he eyed it as he edged closer to the doorway. No sign of the General.

Vincent glanced back at Barret. The larger man nodded. Yuffie touched two fingers to her armlet, eyes seeming to darken as the focus took her. Vincent slid around the doorframe in a crouch, and came to his feet almost immediately, grimacing and putting up his weapon.

"Clear," he said. 

Yuffie gulped audibly. "That's what you call 'clear'?"

The passage was open, but the wrong way, and too far. The bookcase was wedged across the top of the spiral stair, books facing the drop. Sephiroth had written them a message in the dust on the case's back.

_FOLLOW_

"How can we follow if he's closed the passage?" Yuffie whispered. She was still near the door. She had not seen what Vincent had, and was even now moving to cover.

"Not that way," he ground out, a flare of adrenaline rousing the demon at last. "There's another stair to the left."

* * *

Movement at the corner of her eye. Tifa glanced up to see Nanaki shaking his head briskly, as if to dislodge an insect, or a stray thought. She had barely dropped her eyes back to the report ( _Dehydration in M2 Trial Subjects_ ) when he raised his head again, ears pricked forward, stock-still and listening.

"What is it?" she murmured.

"Voices," said the guardian of the canyon. "I heard the shelves, but there are no footsteps."

Tifa's brow knit, and Nanaki's baleful gaze echoed her thought: there was no reason for the way to be closed while they were down here. No good reason, anyway. "Get Cloud."

As Nanaki trotted toward the far end of the lab, Tifa stepped around the doorframe into the damp stone corridor to let her eyes adjust. There was no movement she could sense, no sound apart from the infrequent drip of moisture seeping down through the earth above them. So why close the bookcase? Precaution? Boredom? Yuffie had been on shift, she recalled. Perhaps it was nothing more than the girl needing more supplies for her book fort.

She could hope.

Cloud's boots grated in the crushed stone and the dust. He squeezed her shoulder as he passed, frowning into the passageway as Nanaki's tail flame lit them both for a brief moment, and then plunged them back into darkness as he ran ahead. She stayed at Cloud's shoulder, trying not to let the blaze of light distract her.

But as far as they could tell, no one else had entered. Nanaki reported no new scents, just frowned upward when they came to the stairwell. "Barret," he said. "And Yuffie. Arguing."

"Surprise," Cloud muttered under his breath. Tifa's lips twitched. "Nanaki."

The great cat took the lead, pausing where necessary to let them climb the stairs in safety. As they neared the top, however, the flame began to lash back and forth with his agitation. He reared up to rest his paws on...

"Books? On this side?" Tifa's voice was loud enough to startle herself, as well as the voices on the other side of the shelving.

"Tifaaaa? Are you there?" A curt murmur and then, in aside, " _You_ quiet down, some of us are trying to help the _people_ , not the _hole_ in the wall. _Tiiifaaaaa?_ "

"We're here. What's happened?"

"Barret used his _powers of subtlety_ , that's what ha--"

"Sephiroth knows." Vincent's voice cut across the rest, crisp with thinly-veiled irritation. "Another passage has been opened to the left of the original. He has left sign for us to follow."

Cloud and Tifa traded wary glances in the flickering light of Nanaki's flame. "Just like old times," the ex-Soldier said. "Can you get us out?"

"We were trying when you came up. We have to block the other passage to do it, though, and _someone_ won't move."

"As I said: I will go after him, while you extract Cloud and the others."

"As _we_ said, pretty clearly, we're none of us given to mumbling: _like hell you will._ "

Cloud beat twice on the bookcase for silence, and flexed his hand with a wince when he got it. "Vincent. Scope the passage, but stay close. We'll follow as soon as we can." When Yuffie began to protest, he added, "Yuffie, you and me next. You know what we'll need."

Tifa flinched as Nanaki's tail thudded into her calf. She dropped a hand to his bristling shoulder and buried her fingers in his pelt. He was tense.

"I can track him," he muttered, "but in the dark..."

"Vincent will track him this time," Cloud said, crouching to be at eye level. "We can't be blinded down there."

Nanaki nodded, apparently satisfied, but his tail never stopped lashing. Tifa ruffled his mane, but the guardian only lowered his head further, and then lay down. She frowned, but let it go; they had bigger worries.

Beyond the shelving, Barret and Yuffie were bickering again. Snatches of their conversation drifted through heavy wood: "--not that way, look, the track--" "--jus' get out the way and let me--"

With a shriek that made Nanaki snarl under his breath, the bookcase juddered to one side -- and then flipped, smooth as butter, giving them a brief view of Aeris' clasped hands and Barret's deep grimace before the shelves slid closed again -- this time with the books on the other side.

In the flickering light of Nanaki's tail, Tifa stared at the word written in the dust on the back of the bookshelf, and felt her stomach clench.

* * *

"Absolutely not."

" _Listen_ to me!" Aeris' cheeks were still pale, but she was closer to stomping her foot than he had ever seen her. "This is only a problem because it was kept secret -- _again_ , even after what happened last time. It needs to _stop_."

"It has stopped," he snapped. "We don't have time for this, Aeris. You are not going down there -- not with an escort, and certainly not without a weapon."

"I'd like to see you stop me," she said, and then paused, closed her eyes, as if even she was surprised by the harshness in her voice. Her hands made a gentle motion, as if she were pushing her anger aside. "I need to do this, Cloud. He needs _us_ to do this. He needs to know we trust him."

Cloud had opened his mouth to tell her that Sephiroth needed to know as little as possible to prevent things like this from happening in the first place, when Tifa caught his eye. She was watching him, eyes dark with concern, and she was shaking her head. He took a deep breath, and let it out through his nose.

"You're not going down there without me." Or Ultima. "Barret, stay with Nanaki. Yuffie, go ahead with Vincent. We'll follow as soon as we're armed. _All_ of us," he added, staring Aeris down.

Her lips compressed into a crinkled white line, but she followed Tifa from the room at the mention of armlets, furious, but Cloud couldn't find it in himself to care about her anger. If Sephiroth deserved their trust, he would want Aeris' most of all.

And if anything would trigger him, she would.


	14. The General

[Day 10, 0814 Nibel Standard Time]

She went down the stairs with her eyes closed, testing each step before she placed her weight, breathing as silently as she knew how. Listening to the dark. Feeling it breathe. 

The cool air curled around her like an underwater current; maybe just ventilation shafts, probably other doors. The hairs on the back of Yuffie's arms rose. She tilted her feet over the edge of every step, then lifted, and placed. Her breath in the back of her mouth, slow, cold. Heartbeat faster, louder than she wanted.

She opened her eyes.

The darkness was not absolute; enough light had followed her down the stairs that she could see bare traces of rough-paved floor fading into nothingness. She stepped to the left, out of that barely-there corona of light, and a gloved hand closed over her mouth.

Yuffie dragged in half a breath, prepared to twist, had one hand halfway to the materia on her right armlet before warm, sharp metal curved around her biceps and the panic vanished in a rush that left her knees weak.

She raised a hand to Vincent's human forearm and pinched him as hard as she could. The sharp bronze fingers on her bicep firmed briefly in warning, and then he released her.

Yuffie stepped forward, barely managing to control the gasps of breath, heart hammering wildly. Cursing a blue streak in her head was not as satisfying as attempting to get Vincent in a headlock, but it was probably less dangerous than scuffling with Vincent while Sephiroth could be anywhere, anywhere, waiting--

She focused on her breathing.

Vincent, when he spoke, avoided sibilants. "Nowhere ahead," he murmured. "Low volume."

Yuffie nodded, knowing he would see her, and motioned for him to go ahead. When he moved past, she caught a tendril of his hair, still damp, and fell into careful step behind him. Her eyes were good, but she wasn't superhuman. She could respond to movement better than some, sense her way better than others, but she couldn't see. Even the greatest of ninja had to make do with plain old human retina. Still, she could place her feet when he placed his, and keep the fingers of her left hand hovering over her materia.

And watch the darkness for green eyes. Of course.

" _Drnaa fyoc_ ," Vincent said after a time, the second word barely a breath. Yuffie grimaced.

" _Fyed?_ "

"No. We go on." The hair between her fingers pulled taut as he lifted his head. She caught it the same instant he did: a faint waft of breeze from their right.

" _Fa cruimt lmuca dra aqed._ "

"Agreed. Leave a knife." He led her a few yards and paused as she wedged the blade upright in the crumbling mortar between two paving stones.

"You owe me a kunai," Yuffie said under her breath as she straightened, and jerked reflexively backward at a sudden rush of air. She widened her stance, left hand cupped over the materia so that the glow of their response wouldn't give her position away.

After what felt like hours, she felt the tension in Vincent ease -- or at least, dip down to normal levels. "... _Cunno_. I heard..."

Yuffie rolled her eyes; figured she only got a 'sorry' out of him when 'apologies' might carry far enough to kill them. She retrieved the lock of hair she'd been using as a lifeline, and waited, listening intently alongside the gunman. There was nothing but the faint drip of moisture, near omni-present in Nibelheim, and--

"There," Vincent said. Yuffie nodded, mouth too dry to form sound. There was a voice, barely audible, distorted beyond understanding or recognition by the passage through which it echoed. But even in Nibelheim, ranting madmen were in limited supply.

* * *

Every house in Nibelheim had battery-powered camp lanterns; the storms were too violent and too frequent to go without. Vincent had the requisite two per person and two backups, removed from their packaging, but speckled with dust. She passed two up to Aeris and reached to slit open a pack of batteries.

She hated painting a target on Barret, but Cloud was right: without materia or a blade, and in his emaciated condition, the danger Sephiroth posed was limited. Their long-range specialists could afford to hold the lanterns if it meant they wouldn't be going in blind.

It didn't mean she had to like it, though.

The gunman went first, Tifa and Aeris close behind. Once they were out of the narrow staircase, Cloud and Tifa moved out of the immediate circle of light, masking themselves in the lamp-bearers' shadows.

Aeris flung out one hand, the platinum wristband and its materia flinging arcs of coloured light around the roughly-hewn corridor, and they began their cautious progress. Vincent's footsteps were clear in the gathered dust and fine gravel; Yuffie's less-so. Sephiroth's loping gait and lack of caution made his prints the clearest of all.

"He knew where he was going," she said, and felt her heartbeat gentle when she heard Cloud's agreement. He was focused, but not afraid. 

"There's an intersection ahead," Aeris murmured a few minutes later. "And something on the ground. Metal, I think."

"One of Yuffie's knives," Cloud confirmed after a moment. "They all went down the right passage."

"Lucky," Aeris said, and Tifa grimaced.

"Or not." She cracked her knuckles and clasped her hands over her head to stretch out her spine. "He's fooled us with illusions before. What if this is one of them?"

"It's possible," Aeris conceded, "But I doubt his spirit is strong enough to work magic that intricate. I don't know it ever will be."

"It's not a chance we can take." Cloud glanced at Aeris, waiting for argument. When none came, he turned to Tifa. "You and Barret take the left fork. Aeris and I will continue. If the path splits again, come back here and guard the home passage. We don't want to spread ourselves too thin."

"Got it." Tifa grasped his upper arm gently. "Be careful."

"You, too." His fingertips brushed hers as she dropped her hand, and then Barret was lifting his lantern and crunching off into the lefthand passage. She raised a hand to wave to Aeris before she followed him.

* * *

"Leviathan, how far does this go?"

Vincent ignored the slip; they had walked far enough for the immediate fear to wear off, and he wasn't about to attempt to frighten her further. Still, he kept his voice low. "Perhaps to the mountain."

Yuffie actually stopped, suddenly enough that the lock of hair she held pulled taut. "No way. We can't have gone that far."

"The rock has changed." It was colder, harder, and the little he could see was beginning to look suspiciously cave-like, instead of like a man-made tunnel. "Less soil."

"I guess we've been climbing for a while," Yuffie allowed, and stepped forward after him again. "Has he been this way? Can you tell?"

"I have a hunch." He had a dire wolf in his left ear, watching, waiting for the darkness to blink. "This tunnel is not so old as the other. It is possible that Shinra continued to use this as a site for mako-related experimentation, even after..."

"Ugh."

"Indeed."

* * *

The left-hand passage crawled in a gradual circle, the grading smooth and no steeper than any wheelchair ramp would allow. The remnants of steel rails were set in the outside wall at ankle, knee, and hip height, though Tifa thought she'd want a tetanus booster shot before she dared to lay a hand on them now. The moisture in the air and the minerals in the stone did terrible things to unprotected metal in Nibelheim, and Shinra's best steel thirty years ago had no hope of surviving without proper maintenance.

About forty feet along the passage, the floor flattened out briefly to accommodate a service elevator. The elevator doors had fared no better than the steel rails, but in their case the cause was more obvious: the metal was twisted outward around the shape of an invisible explosion. The steel was rusted, charred in some places, and covered in chalky residue in others. Tifa grimaced at Barret and cracked her knuckles again. "Looks like they weren't any more popular in Nibelheim than in Midgar."

"Huh." Barret edged close enough to let the light from the lantern illuminate the shaft. "Only a floor or two, looks like. 's where the cage is stopped, anyway. Top of it's all busted, too."

Tifa raised an eyebrow. "So, what, someone blasted through the top of the cage, flew up the shaft, and then took out the door?" She shook her head. "Let's go. The sooner we're down there, the sooner we're back upstairs, and I could do with fewer tunnels in my life."

* * *

Aeris raised the lantern and a palm full of fire, which she snuffed as soon as she realised what surrounded them. "Books?"

"Binders." Cloud eyed the low ceiling and sheathed his sword to drag one from its shelf. "More reports. The Turks'll be thrilled."

"Yuffie might be," Aeris offered. She held the lantern high and peered over Cloud's shoulder, scanning the pages as he flipped through them. "Wait. Go back -- was that...?"

"Huh." Cloud raised his eyebrows. "Gast. Must be his earlier work. Before the Jenova Project."

"Mmm," Aeris said, frowning. "I can't see Hojo's name."

"Plenty of scientists in Shinra," Cloud said. "And the manor's a little big for one."

"I guess so." Aeris edged past a collapsed shelf. "It's nowhere near as well-preserved as the other lab. It's almost like a dumping ground."

"Research that didn't pan out, maybe. Let's get back to the others. Sephiroth isn't hiding here."

"Right behind you," Aeris said. Her hand hovered momentarily over a sheaf of reports and then she snatched it back and followed him from the room. Time enough to investigate her father's work when they were sure everyone else was safe.

* * *

The saline stench of mako clung to the back of her throat, sat thickly on her tongue whenever she wet her lips to whisper. "Door ahead."

"I'll get it." Barret eyed the double set of doors, sagging and warped with moisture, the stainless steel panels and windows crusted with mildew. It took one well-placed kick to crumple the door on the right, and without its support, the left-hand door toppled with a shriek that grated right down Tifa's spine.

Barret snorted as he scuffed through the rubble. "Quality Shinra construction, as usual."

Tifa stepped nearer to give the room more light, and nearly retched at the reek of rot and mako. "What _is_ that?"

"Mako. All over the floor," Barret gestured with his gun arm, and Tifa saw the faint green glow amid crystalline fragments so oily they looked congealed. "There's a leak in there somewhere."

"That can't just be mako." Tifa moved ahead of him, one eye on the mako sludge, the other on the operating theatre they had just walked into. Lamplight glinted off dull metal surfaces; gurneys, enough overhead lights that she knew this space would have been blinding once, and cleaner than her griddle at closing time. Something crunched underfoot, and she winced. "Broken glass."

"From the back," Barret said. "There's one of them rooms."

"You're right." She could see the faint mirror-like quality of the glass that remained in the panes of the observation rooms. But behind that... "There's our specimen elevator."

They edged through the theatre space, past trolleys of equipment and rows of blank screens the size of Barret's fist. This lab was older than the other, and it hadn't been updated. "I don't think this was part of the Jenova Project."

"Well, ain't that a relief," Barret muttered, stomping ahead of her through the debris, and pausing by the large windows. "...ngh. Aw, hell."

"What is it?" Tifa started forward, but Barret swung around and ushered her back the way they'd come. "Barret, what are you--"

He was shaking his head, and even in the colourless lamp light, he looked pale. "Trust me, darlin', you don't wanna know."

Ordinarily, Tifa would storm right past anyone who told her such a thing, but something in Barret's voice made her cold. "Let's get back upstairs, then," she said. "There might be other splits in the passage."

* * *

Yuffie's first dumb thought was that she smelled the ocean. She tugged on Vincent's hair and tilted her head at him, sniffing. He nodded, the movement tugging at the hair around her index finger, and she grimaced. Mako, and industrial grease, and the silence that had, in the past, been filled by a deep, steady hum. Groovy.

The reactor had been decommissioned a little over a year ago. It had been one of the first to go offline, but dismantling it and taking it down off the mountain piece by piece had been too expensive for the fledgling Neo-Shinra to condone. So it sat here on the mountain, sealed as tight as Reeve could make it, silent and dark, without even the dubious blessing of emergency lighting. She didn't know how that was supposed to help.

And if he'd torn it down like he was supposed to, she wouldn't be in this tunnel right now, because they'd have caved it in when they found it, and probably torn down the mansion, which would also have neatly solved the problem of Vincent moping forever in that goddamn house.

Yuffie made a mental note to sock Reeve in the arm when the Turks were done rescuing him, and yanked sharply on Vincent's hair, just because.

" _E caa ed._ "

Yuffie blinked, and peeped around him. The light was wan and greenish, but it was enough to see the crenellations in the rock, the stalactites that had been trying valiantly to smack Vincent in the face the whole way here, and, above a series of sharp lines she assumed were steps, a hatch like the outside door to a basement.

Beyond it, she could make out the squirming shadows of pipes and cables, flexible aluminium hose and the dusty sheen of broken glass.

Jenova's chamber.

She moved ahead of Vincent, uncertain if the stairs were metal or stone until she touched them, and she crawled over them with hands and feet at the edge of each step rather than warping them with her weight in the middle. The dust was thick enough to coat her palms, but it wouldn't muffle Vincent's bronze-tipped boots.

On her belly, trying not to breathe too fast to avoid inhaling dust (to avoid inhaling panic), she moved to the top of the stairs.

They'd come up behind her tank, amidst the press of cables and pipes. Mako had congealed foully on the floor, but it hadn't lain still long enough to go entirely dark; the light that it cast showed her debris, deep slices on the walls, but those were old scars. She couldn't see Sephiroth here.

She raised a palm to Vincent before lowering herself cautiously to the ground. No audible crunching. Good. She didn't even brush the pipes on her way past; Vincent would have to turn sideways, but that was fine -- he made a smaller target that way.

Her survey of the room still gave her nothing. She light-footed it to the broken door and eased herself in close to the wall to see outside it. Nothing ahead, or to the left. When she moved to see the right, her heart jumped up under her tongue and her breathing seemed suddenly ten times louder.

She moved back to Vincent as quickly as she could without turning away from the door, and scooped her hand frantically through the air to get him to follow. She heard him move to her back, and stood frozen, wondering if Sephiroth had heard, too.

His gauntlet found her elbow, and rested lightly around the flesh just above it. He didn't squeeze, but she got the message.

She drew a kunai from her belt, and moved.

* * *

They slithered from the antechamber like dragonspawn from the shell, this one dragging tattered scarlet wings, that one blinking rapidly in the light.

"Come to finish what you started?" he asked.

"We've done it before." Kisaragi's eyes were too large, too expressive to mask her fear, but the hand that held the kunai did not waver. Valentine was stone.

"So I recall."

They waited -- seconds, minutes, hours. His mind was a jumble of images; this place, their faces, an alien voice in his head, sinuous and coiling. Valentine -- or was it Tseng? Turks were all the same, their features, even their voices blending into one throughout the years, each one adept at harnessing and hiding the psychotic.

He had often thought, in other circumstances, he would make a good Turk.

He straightened from his slump, stared them in the eye. "Will you wait until I lose my mind, or just until I sleep?"

"We're not murderers," snapped Kisaragi, and Sephiroth could not hold the snort that left him.

"I suppose that is where we differ. In my right mind, I have never tried to fight against that word."

He pushed himself to his feet, steadying himself on the hand rail, thoughtfully provided by men who would straighten their spectacles and observe the victim of a fall down these stairs with no more discomfort than they had observed the changes that concentrated mako wrought upon the human bloodstream. The human placenta.

Him.

"Perhaps it's that I am not fully human," he mused, and narrowed his eyes just as they did. "Don't misunderstand. This is no ludicrous notion of godhead. If there is one thing to be learned from our whole sorry history, it is that Cetra are born, not made. It would make things simpler, however."

"They are simple enough." Valentine's eyes burned red. "Return with us."

"To a gallery of my victims?"

"To the house your mother died in."

Sephiroth eyed the ex-Turk through a fall of silver hair. "My mother."

"Lucrecia." Valentine's jaw clenched. "Hojo's wife."

"A human woman. Wife of a human man."

Kisaragi gave him a long look, and then made the kunai vanish. "Only if you think Hojo was human."

* * *

"Anything?"

The call echoed down the stone corridor, and Tifa grinned when she recognised Aeris' voice. The way the lantern had been swinging, she'd been expecting Yuffie. Or a pathologically cheerful Tonberry.

"There's another lab down there," she called back. "No sign of Sephiroth, though."

"Us neither." Aeris face, when it came into view, was not nearly as cheerful as her lantern had suggested. Cloud's was equally dark.

"What kind of lab?"

"The bad kind," Barret growled. Cloud glanced toward Tifa, but she didn't challenge the assessment.

"We found an archive. It looks like some of Gast's old work, but it's big enough that it could be lots of things." He shifted, clearly uncomfortable. "If any of Hojo's work is down here, we have a lot more ground to cover."

"You mean more clues," Tifa said, but she barely got a smile.

"Maybe." He took a deep breath, and his hand twitched upward as if to run through his hair. "Right. Barret, you and me are going to follow Yuffie and Vincent. They've been gone too long. Tifa, Aeris, I want you to get back topside. Try to contact the Turks. If anything goes wrong, they'll need to know first."

Aeris' lips flattened out. Her eyes blazed, but she contained herself and nodded. When Cloud and Barret were out of sight, Tifa reached out and squeezed her cold fingers.

"It'll be fine," she said. "They'll all be fine."

Aeris didn't squeeze back.


	15. The Underground

[Day 10, 1635 Nibel Standard Time]

Sephiroth was not escorted through the study and into the entrance hall at gunpoint. This was, Yuffie felt, an achievement -- although from the way Barret was studiously avoiding Sephiroth's eye, and the serious-trouble-young-man scowl on Aeris' face when they staggered back into the study, she was coming to doubt her initial supposition that Vincent and Cloud had formed a secret language of interpretive eyebrow dance and never using a goddamn comb.

She flopped down on the carpet next to Red at the first opportunity and stretched one leg while she massaged the other. He growled under his breath, but the bump of his forehead against her elbow was affectionate.

She was about to tip sideways and return the headbutt when Tifa came in from the hall, PHS halfway to her belt.

"Cid's already in the air," she said. "They're headed to Rocket Town for the time being. They'll check in at eighteen-hundred." She, too, was very careful not to look in Sephiroth's direction, as if avoiding his eyes would prevent Sephiroth from grasping her meaning.

As far as Yuffie could tell, it was working. In her peripheral vision, Sephiroth stood like a statue, eyes fixed on the far wall. His face was slack, expressionless; his posture and breathing were neutral, relaxed. Only the occasional flex of his fingers, the tightening of his knuckles and their dull pop, betrayed him.

_A true warrior, with few tells._ Her memory gave the words to Staniv, but only Gorky had been on the council before the war. _A serpent, striking from the depths._ But he was too close to the surface right now.

Yuffie's fingers tightened in Red's mane. Sephiroth's knuckles cracked.

Cloud said, "Vincent. Aeris."

And Yuffie traipsed out into the hall with the rest of them, silently cursing Cloud Strife and all his spiky, over-gelled potential offspring, paying no attention whatsoever to the faintly reptilian slits of Vincent's pupils.

* * *

"You were unaware of the secondary lab," Sephiroth stated, as soon as the door had closed. "My childhood memories have never been particularly clear, but I recall that place quite vividly." His words were crisp and measured, Vincent noted. Masking pain, or falsehood?

"I do not."

"Me neither." Cloud's arms hung neutral, shoulders straight in defiance of a defensive posture.

Sephiroth shrugged, a measured motion, not casual in the least. "I was five, perhaps six. I imagine you were elsewhere."

Chaos pulsed, red rage and black grief in their chest. They did not correct the swordsman. To their left, Aeris shifted, and Vincent blinked rapidly. Breathed.

"You were here with Professor Gast," she prompted, and Sephiroth nodded, once.

"Gast, a number of other scientists, Turks. At the time, I believed they were preparing me for my role in SOLDIER." His eyes narrowed, and his hands flexed. "Revisiting the place... I no longer believe that was the case. Nor was it part of the Jenova Project. More than that, you must learn from the lab itself."

"That's it?" Cloud's tone was neutral, but they had all heard that quiet control before. Aeris glanced in his direction, but said nothing. Vincent followed her cue.

"Unless you have a particular interest in the daily schedule of a child officer-cum-lab rat, or believe an apology for behaviour over which I had no control would be of any benefit, yes -- it is."

Vincent felt a moment's sympathy for every member of AVALANCHE who had ever been thwarted by his own reluctance to discuss his past. He could not blame Sephiroth for being unwilling to discuss events that he was surely still struggling to come to terms with -- but neither could he blame Cloud for the snort of frustration that escaped him.

Aeris cleared her throat into the silence. "We understand. But we do need to keep you under supervision, in case... in case."

"I have no reasonable objection."

Behind Sephiroth, Vincent raised his chin toward Cloud, then tilted his head toward Sephiroth almost imperceptibly. Cloud didn't so much as blink. "Vincent or myself will accompany you at all times."

"Understood," said Sephiroth. He glanced at Vincent, and then preceded him from the room. Vincent followed, three steps behind, trying not to look at Sephiroth and see Lucrecia's wrists, Lucrecia's jaw; trying to suppress the lunatic laughter behind his right eye.

* * *

[Day 10, 1930 Nibel Standard Time]

Even in a borrowed set of dungarees and a filthy flight cap from the Highwind's engine room, Reeve and his companion were about as subtle as the carnival cat-robot secretary flouncing along behind them. Feather struck a note of mako-hazed waif that might have worked in Midgar, even with the natty flight jacket, but in Nibelheim she may as well have been wearing day-glo orange.

At least there weren't many people on the streets this time of night. Street lamps were few and far between, rendered moot by decades of weather and fiend-induced curfew turned habit, and it was too damn cold and windy to go out after dark here, anyway.

Didn't help Reno stop eyeballing every lane they passed, daring every trash can, especially after Rude peeled off.

By the time they reached the manor, he was wound so tight even Elena had quit chattering. When Valentine opened the door and said, "Off the street," as if it hadn't occurred to Reno that whatever freaks Ayuki was with might have eyes on them, it was all he could do not to pound the prick. And Valentine probably knew it. Glaring, Reno gestured Reeve inside, turned to watch Cait's lumbering progress alongside the trail of smoke that surrounded Highwind, and only really noticed the other occupants of the entrance hall when Reeve choked on his own spit two steps inside the house.

Aeris stepped forward, grinning from ear to ear, and Reeve reached out for her hand as he tried to stop coughing, pulled her into an embrace before his breathing evened out. "Welcome back," she said, and Reeve dissolved into coughing chuckles again, tears leaking from exhausted eyes and running into the tangle of his beard.

"Same to you," he croaked at last, giving her hand one last squeeze. "Reno tells me you aren't our only visitor."

Sephiroth, who had watched the scene with an expression of boredom-tinged amusement from an armchair, stood. "President." His hand twitched. Whether in abortive handshake or salute, Reno wouldn't have cared to bet.

"Reeve," said the man in question. He didn't offer a hand, either, but Reno suspected that was only because he couldn't quite let go of Aeris' hand to do so. "I believe we were introduced at a cocktail party once." Aeris gave him a look so radiant it might have blinded the room.

Sephiroth's face took on a strange expression, as if surprised to discover that he did , indeed, remember.

Reeve grinned. "That's about how you looked when Scarlet caught up with you, too."

Reno almost sympathised.

* * *

[Day 10, 2300 Nibel Standard Time]

Yuffie reached out across the table, hands raised in supplication to her very favourite president, even when she didn't want anything, and rolled her eyes when Reeve passed her another slice of pizza. "Not actually what I was aiming for," she informed him, popping it onto her plate for later and extending her greasy fingers expectantly.

"Mm," Reeve said brightly, and passed the garlic bread. Yuffie's face hit the tabletop between her napkin and her can of sugar.

"The _materia_ , Reeve, jeez." She propped her face on greasy knuckles. "You can't tell me stories of mysterious girlfriends and split-materia amulets and battles with Shiva and _not show me your split materia_."

"About that." Reeve swallowed, and looked apologetic. "It _was_ split." He grabbed a napkin and began wiping his fingers, slowly and precisely. "Something Feather did fixed it. I don't know what -- I'm not sure _she_ knows. But... well." He fished in his trouser pocket for a moment, and held his closed hand out to her. "See for yourself."

The materia was whole, mastered Shiva; Yuffie could see that in an instant. Half a dozen other people would say the same after a few moments more. The interesting thing was the torque. The bar between the materia halves had snapped cleanly, with only a slight curve near the severed ends. It had been cold, that much Yuffie could figure, but more than that, it had been _fast_. She squinted, and frowned.

"The setting's fused with the materia?"

"Not only that." Reeve gestured for the amulet, and Yuffie handed it back to him. "The materia is pushing the setting back out." He traced a nail down the curve, where a bare millimeter of the flat base could be seen beyond the lip of the claws set into the crystal.

"It's... growing," Yuffie said. "But... it's mastered. We haven't _used_ it. How can it be growing?"

Reeve scooted it across the table at her and sat back, patting his returning paunch with great affection. "I have no idea," he said. "But I figure you're going to have a lot of questions for Feather tomorrow morning."

"Pshyeah," said Yuffie, who generally pretended not to know the meaning of the word 'patience'. "Where is she now?"

Reeve rolled his eyes. "If she has any sense, sleeping. Like you should be."

"After all this?" Yuffie's gesture included the tabletop of empty pizza boxes, tinfoil, pie tins, and soda cans. "You're lucky I'm not on the roof."

* * *

Vincent found her in the courtyard in the wee hours, balancing on the statuary. He forebore to chide her; she would only behave more recklessly to spite him. "They seem to be withstanding the weather," he said instead, and politely ignored the jolt of tension that made her foot slip from a stone angel's shoulder.

She caught herself, of course. "There's a nest on top of the northwest gargoyle," she informed him. "Definitely not owls."

"I heard." He'd seen her rapid progress past the first floor window, too, and had a hand to his holster before he realised that the demon wasn't stirring, that any threat was pure imagination.

"Good thing you're caught-up on sleep, monster man." She eyed the angel's left wing and, with a rapid twist, she was on her hands with her feet in the air, grinning like a carnival mask, the flesh of her face distorted by gravity.

"Just as well," he agreed, and waited.

Yuffie held her handstand for thirty seconds, a minute, before the tension returned to her frame and she had to let it go. She made a sound of disgust, and pushed herself back into the air to land upright in front of the statue, frowning deeply.

"She can't tell me how she did it," she said at last. "She doesn't know. Or she doesn't understand the question. Not only _that_ ," knuckles tightening, "She says she can't fix my Leviathan. She can't _understand_ him."

Vincent watched the tension creeping up her spine, watched her still hands flit into motion, whirling a kunai before her, around her back, a wavering globe of the slim blade's sheen in the moonlight. "She does not strike me as the type to withhold information."

"No." The kunai stilled abruptly, and Yuffie stuffed it back into her belt. She turned to him with a grimace dressed as a smile. "Not on purpose. Doesn't make me want to smack her any less." He didn't -- couldn't -- laugh, and after a moment, her dark eyes flickered past him. "How's life with the General, monster man?"

Her lack of apology didn't bother him; her pride was familiar, and almost comforting. Her choice of subject, however... "His behaviour is exemplary."

"Pity you spend so much time with the rest of us slobs, huh?" She grimaced, and shook her head, glaring at her hands. "No, that's... god, Vincent, just-- just go inside. I'm not..."

_Fit company._ "Were we ever?"

Her laughter was a sudden snort of breath. A sniffle followed it, but when she looked up, her eyes were dry. "Guess not," she said. "C'mon, then, monster man. Bad company needs all the beauty sleep it can get."

* * *

[Day 11, 0900 Nibel Standard Time]

"Figured you of all people would be champin' to get down there," Cid grumbled over the umpteenth cup of tea, while Yuffie rattled around the kitchen and grappled with the cheap toaster Tifa had picked up when it became apparent that Vincent's breakfast habits were roughly equivalent to those of a college student.

"I was ready to go after dinner, not my fault you pansies wanted to wait 'til it was light," she said, then tucked her tongue between her teeth as she levered the edge of her toast up high enough to grab it and flip it onto her plate. "Like daylight makes a difference down there."

"Damn sure makes a difference when we come back up," Cid said, but didn't rush her further.

Just as well, she thought a short while later as they descended the second staircase, this time with torches in hand; with the amount of mould and fungus on the walls, taking the toast with her would either give her superpowers or make her puke _forever_.

The air grew cooler as they descended, and the debris fell away from the walls, starved of the moisture required to propagate. Lana and Rude followed Cait's flouncing tail ahead to the archive that Aeris and Cloud had found, while Cid and Yuffie descended further to the lab.

Reno and Elena were already there, although she looked as if she'd drawn the short straw, and Reno didn't look much happier. Yuffie threw her arms wide. "Rejoice! Your princess has arrived."

Elena looked at her, then went back to the console she was trying to extract data from. Reno rolled his eyes. "Just get going, Kisaragi, and don't make me look in more of these damn tanks than you have to. Some of them are downright nasty."

Yuffie eyed the room, which would have been more of an amphitheatre if the audience hadn't been stewing in their own juices for half a century or more, and glanced back at Cid. "Top left?"

"Just fuckin' start already," Cid grouched, and took a weathered pencil and notepad from his top pocket.

She trotted across the main lab floor and let herself into the pod room. The air was cold and thick in spite of the stench, mako salt and sweet organic putrefaction making it hard to breathe through either nose or mouth. She pulled the neck of her shirt up over her nose and mouth, trying not to gag. "I'm having second thoughts about that piece of toast," she said, and Cid shrugged and gestured her onward.

"You can't even smell this, can you," she accused him as she climbed. "You have actually absorbed so much tar and tannin that it has formed a _protective coating_. Okay, okay, I'm looking, stop bothering me, I need to concentrate, Cid, jeez." She peered inside the pod, and glanced at the materia set into the channel in the door. "Command, looks like a... a Morph, I think. And this guy really needs to shave-- well. Chisel, I guess. Next one is a _holy crap_ , human knifeblock, is there a knives materia no one told me about? Oh, oh, wait, it's a Double Cut, never mind. Yeesh."

Reno hadn't been kidding about the state of the victims in the pods; most of those with Command and Independent materia set into their doors could still be recognised as human, but when they moved to the second tier and started to hit those with Magic materia in front of them, Yuffie had to close her eyes and bite her tongue to keep herself from sobbing like a little girl.

It was almost a relief when they came to the pod with the Seal materia. The corpse had crystallised; perfect, unchanged. She might not even have punched the tank, if it hadn't been a kid no older than eight, fear and anxiety still plain on his frozen face.

Cid didn't even have the heart to tell her off for it, just heaved a sigh and put the pencil between his teeth. "C'mon, kid. Just a few more to go."

She hoped Cloud wouldn't want a blow-by-blow account.

* * *

[Day ?, ???? ???????]

It was dark in the board room, and cold, but none of them needed light to see, and Titan hardly cared about their comfort. His palms stretched across the chill cement, mottled white and dun with cold, but his body held no tremor.

"It seems they have ignored our warning," he said, in a voice threaded with sand.

From the darkness, a chuckle. "Children are ever wilful," came the placid agreement. Titan's jaw firmed.

"You forever underestimate children, Leviathan. They must be stopped." He tapped a fingertip against the table's surface. "...swiftest runner, daughter of air."

"Mm-hmm?" The table creaked as lean, tanned arms came to rest on it.

"Bring their investigation to a close. Ensure that none can reopen it."

Teeth gleamed. "I'll get Laurent."


	16. Rising Son

Vincent walked, and the shadows walked in step.

The sky boiled, dark clouds writhing and twisting at speed, too fast to be driven by mere wind. The colours of the landscape surrounding him were wild and bright, too intense, as if someone had mistuned an old television. The shadows smeared over the landscape like tar, bubbling and shifting, but still — barely — human.

Where the edges of their strange land fell away, a sea of mist, pale green and turbulent as the cloud above them, swirled and sucked at the feet of the great titans, some furred, some scaled, some as strange and undefined as the shadows that they, too, carried in their outstretched palms, claws, coils.

He looked back as he crested a great knuckle, and saw the twisted horns and ragged wings of Chaos, far above, farther behind. The clouds that obscured its face gleamed red with the witchlight of its eyes.

Flames danced behind the shadows, trickling along the ground, slithering over shadows as slowly and deliberately as a serpent. It caught each shadow in turn, leaping from one to another, moving toward him.

He ran, and the shadows ran with him, around him. He heard the screams as shadows on his heels ignited, saw the shadow to his right spark and catch, twist and curl and turn to ash before his eyes.

The flames leapt past him, to the shadows ahead, and to the figure ahead of them, though she ran like the wind itself, head down, long legs pumping. She ran, and she jumped, and the flames snatched and clawed at each other, cheated of their prey.

Vincent stood on the tip of Chaos's claw, hunting the mist below for any sign of the girl, but the flames were intense, and the smoke stung his eyes.

He raised a hand to wipe them, and reeled when his flesh melted smoothly away to claws— talons— fins—

Vincent fell, and the flames streamed out behind him.

* * *

[Day 12, 0700 Nibel Standard Time]

"You are searching for something," Sephiroth repeated patiently. "Whatever else my history means, I may be able to help you find it."

"I appreciate that, but it's not something we can risk," said Cloud. "Besides—"

"Listen, kid," Cid cut across them both, one hand across his eyes, one deliberately pinched about the handle of Vincent's fine 'tai teacup. He sounded like something thrown up by a cat. "General or not, it ain't no easy thing to see. You don't want to go down there, and I sure as hell don't envy Yuffie going in twice."

Stubborn, Sephiroth's face took on a surprisingly childish cast. "If I cannot accompany them to the reactor, I can at least assist in the archives."

"I wouldn't mind the company," Aeris put in, and Cloud only narrowly resisted the impulse to throw up his hands.

"The sword stays here," he gritted out, and Aeris whooped and threw her arms around his neck. Even with everything that could go wrong, it was hard to resist the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "What about Reeve?"

"The Turks are taking him to a barber." Tifa shrugged at the expression on Cloud's face. "The less he looks like himself, the better."

"That'll get the girl out of our hair." Cid swirled the last of the tea in his cup to catch any remnants of sugar, and downed it, little finger curled, but not extended. "Guess that just leaves me'n the old man." Barret thumped the tabletop in jovial threat, and Cid mustered half a grin.

They filtered from the room in twos and threes, straightening jackets and scarves. All but Tifa, who stood frowning into the middle distance, forearms resting on the back of a chair. Cloud leaned across the table and stroked the hair back from her face.

"Oh— sorry." She shook her head, and the hair he had tucked away came tumbling back over her collarbone. "I was miles away."

He tugged gently at the tip of her braid. "Something wrong?"

She bit at her lower lip, frown lines still etched between her delicate brows, and then she shrugged and shook her head. "No. It's nothing." She stepped away, rubbing her hands together, hunching down into the red scarf about her neck. He caught her about the waist and landed a kiss below her right ear. "Cloud..."

"You sure?"

She turned in his arms and laid her forehead against his cheek, fine hair catching in even his light stubble. Then she pushed back and away, and gave him a tight smile. "Just tired. And not exactly looking forward to today."

Cloud sympathised. "You can stick with Aeris in the archives if you want. I'll go to the react—"

"No, it's okay," Tifa cut him off, and smiled again, this time with feeling. "I want to go. For Yuffie's sake."

Cloud studied her eyes for long enough to know she wasn't being entirely honest with him, and tried to keep the sigh under his breath. "If it's too much, come back. Okay?"

"Of course," Tifa said, and Cloud knew enough to translate that to, _Over my dead body._

* * *

The archive wasn't large by any measure, but the binders and boxes packed into every available space made it feel even smaller. The flimsy shelving had not aged well. Rusted supports and swollen chipboard showed in the lamp-light, but only a few shelves had collapsed — the rest were stacked so tightly that they had wedged solid between floor and ceiling.

To Aeris, the space was at once familiar and malevolent. The walls were sheer rock, damp and cold, the life in them dulled by decades of nearby reactor work, but not broken. The voices were faint and far away, but there.

It was the binders that worried her, the sight of her father's looping hand on every spine.

"The moisture's seeped into the columns," Cloud said, and she jumped a little, despite herself. "We won't get much out of this room."

"Maybe we should move what we can upstairs," Aeris suggested. "We can't read in this light, but we can figure out what to salvage."

"You go over the books, then, and tell us what to take up." Cloud cast about for his first armload, picking his way past the mildewing remains of her father's research. "Just be careful when you're moving things. We don't know how stable these shelves are."

"Who grew up in the slums, here?" Aeris pointed out, beginning to test and wiggle the shelves closest to her. "Those boxes near the door should be fine for now. You might want to check the ones that are touching the wall, though -- the damp. Sephiroth, can you...?"

He reached over her to steady the surrounding binders while she coaxed them out and began making a pile at her feet.

Some reports were in plastic sleeves, and moisture had collected inside them, ruining them completely. Oddly, it seemed to be the least protected reports that had survived, most of these from Gast. The benefits of being scatterbrained, she supposed, and heard Sephiroth's dark chuckle as he browsed the next pile to remove.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said, too quickly. After a moment, he added, "This filing... it's very like him. Detailed, but haphazard."

"I was just thinking the same thing," she confessed, and grinned despite the grim surroundings. "My mother used to tell me about him. She loved how scatterbrained he was one minute, and how incisive the next."

"He was one of the wisest people I ever knew," Sephiroth said. He crouched to pick up the stack of binders she had assembled, and paused, eyes suddenly distant.

"But?" she prompted after a moment, and tried to crush the sudden thud of heartbeat in her throat when his eyes became slit-pupilled and focused suddenly on hers.

"...nothing," he said again after a moment. "I thought I heard something."

* * *

"Boobs, I swear to Ashura, if you haven't been writing these down, I am going to put mako slush down your back."

Tifa raised her eyebrows. "Five All, unmastered; five Final Attack, unmastered; four MP Turbo, unmastered," she rattled off without looking at the notepad, and Yuffie poked out her tongue.

"Don't you use your waitress powers on me," she muttered as she crouched beside another pod. "I can _tell_ when you're not listening, y'know."

"Mmm?" Tifa prompted, waiting for the next materia.

"Uh huh. You don't groan as much. Unmastered MP Turbo, by the way."

"I don't groan at _everything_ you say," Tifa retorted, stepping back to let the ninja move to the next row. "Just when you try to sound like Reno."

Yuffie made a flatulent sound between her pursed lips that made Red flatten his ears and stalk, grumbling, to the far end of the row, the light of his tail barely glinting on the dull, filthy metal of the capsules. Tifa rolled her eyes, because that was what Yuffie expected, and tried not to feel exposed with her back to the reactor chamber. Yuffie needed her here and now, not lost in anxious memories.

The scar that ran across her belly seemed alien in moments like these, cold and heavy on her skin while the rest of her seemed to float with pre-battle adrenaline. Usually, she tried to ignore it; now, she focused on the weight, the chill, and waited for Yuffie to call out the next materia.

The low snarl that rippled across the room turned her stomach to water. The floating sensation was back. "Red?"

"Jeez, cat, are you trying to make me wet myself?" Yuffie complained at a whisper, coming to her feet and peering into the gloom and spitting hair out of her mouth. Strands of Tifa's hair lifted before her, coiled gently in the breeze. 

There was a breeze.

"Imbued," Red rumbled, and that was when she struck.

* * *

The prickling of hair against his collar was uncomfortable, but no longer having hair on his face every time he moved was well worth it. Reeve ran a hand through the new cut, grinning at himself in the mirror as habit carried his hand too far. Rude profferred the company credit card and Reeve strolled to the door to talk to Reno.

"What's next?"

"Gotta pick you up some heat." Reno pushed himself off the hand rail and gestured further along the street. "Laney's starting to miss the other half of her wardrobe, so we oughta grab something for your girlfriend, too."

"Weapon, or wardrobe?" Reeve asked, and Reno grimaced.

"Dunno if you want anyone that spaced with a gun. She washes her hands when she's done with those things, right?"

Reeve followed his gaze to where the woman in question stood staring at the water tower, absently twisting a pigeon feather between thumb and forefinger. Lana was a few steps beyond her, rifle broken down over her arm as if she were escorting the belle of the ball.

"Weapons first," she said, and nodded to Rude as he fell into step behind Reeve. "Down that way."

Feather tilted her head when she saw him, and gathered her hair up behind her head to mimic his new shorter look. Reeve tugged on the hanks of chocolate and cobalt that had escaped her fingers and grinned as her eyes crossed trying to focus on them. "We should have had you cleaned up while we were in there," he said.

Reeve caught sight of Reno's mouth thinning just before Feather squeaked and spun. His long forefinger hovered in the air, mid-tapping motion. "Nice ink," he said.

Feather tilted her head, and for a moment Reeve caught sight of something lacy and delicate behind the tangle of her hair. He lifted his eyebrows at Reno's taut expression.

"A snowflake," Reno said.

Reeve's mouth twisted to one side. It could mean nothing. It could mean anything. He shrugged at the Turk and turned to coax Feather along with them, but she had stopped in the middle of the walkway, every one of them forgotten as she stared into the middle distance. "Feather?"

No response.

Lana moved closed. "Feather? Everything okay, sugar?"

This time, her green eyes cleared, focused, and she smiled. Softly, she told them, "The wind is loud today."

* * *

Cid could say what he wanted about her goofy-looking outfit; the Chocobo-Imbued was _fast_ , and Yuffie'd have given her left tit for Wind Slash. Red's flame guttered, his snarls lost in the wind's roar. Even boosted by Haste, Tifa's fists were no match for the Chocobo-Imbued's speed, and in the force of the wind ripping through the cavern, her hair had torn free of its bindings and swallowed her whole.

Yuffie's wasn't doing much better; she cursed state dinners with every strand she blinked from her eyes and council meetings with every hair she spat from her mouth. She could hardly stand against the wind — but throwing Conformer in this gale was tantamount to suicide.

"What's the matter? Feeling a little under the weather?" A pitched giggle, half a shriek. "Poor AVALANCHE."

Top-knots. They were going back to top-knots, and to hell with the traditionally feminine.

"What is your _problem_?" Yuffie bawled, hardly hearing her own voice as the wind stole it from her tongue. Sparks of blue jumped and crackled in the hair along her arms; the gleaming segments of Wall replicated and spread at her outstretched fingertips. 

Immediately, the pressure of the wind lessened. She caught her balance on her toes, and leapt forward, still buffeted but no longer immobilised by the wind speed. _Not enough._ Haste was on the tip of her tongue when the Chocobo-Imbued launched herself, elbow-first, and the breath left her body so suddenly she felt the spasms of her diaphragm.

"Not so fast, Daughter of Leviathan," the Imbued snarled, nose wrinkled with fury and distaste. She raised a spiked heel and Yuffie rolled, choked down a breath, and heard the squeal and pop that came with punctured metal. Blinking away sweat and tears, she saw the flash of scarlet as Red collided with the Imbued, snarling and seeming to blaze brighter the harder he fought. She saw Tifa behind the Imbued; saw her draw back her fist, neck corded with the effort. She saw the first blow land, saw the Imbued's eyes glow blank and blue, and then the wind, sudden pain, and then nothing.


	17. Firestorm

[Day 12, 0900 Nibel Standard Time]

It started as a grumble, soft enough that Elena touched a hand to her stomach, trying to determine whether it was her. Then it built to a grating, grinding vibration that caught in her heels, knees, teeth, and nearly sent her mug off the far edge of the console. Cait's ears swivelled, flattened, and the regular twitch of his whiskers slowed, and then ceased entirely.

"Can y' hear...?"

"Maybe it's a mako surge?" She re-firmed her grip on the coffee mug, hating the faint quaver in her voice.

"This area hasn't been truly active since–"

A crack, a dying whirr, and the room was plunged into darkness. Elena's eyes snapped to the screens just as they, too, were wiped blank. She gave a tiny, dying sound of disbelief and horror — what were they supposed to do now? — and then Cait's eyes blinked on, slowly brightening and glittering against his whiskers. His small, mobile face was unusually still.

"This's no mako surge, lass." With a series of clunks and clicks, he extracted his claws from the ancient interfaces and began tugging at the cables feeding in under his cape. "Somethin's comin' and it ain't—"

What it wasn't she never heard; the force of a fireball slamming through the damaged specimen elevator into the floor sent her stumbling against the console, mug spinning out of her hand to clatter down the console and shatter at her feet. She barely felt the needle pricks of the shards against her feet and ankles in the face of the heat that flooded the room.

There was a crunch and a shriek as a shadow dropped into the molten wreckage of the elevator, paused there in a crouch. Elena spun to face it with the Glock already in her hand, the wreckage of her mug crunching underfoot. The heat baking off the wreckage was unbelievable, enough to dry her mouth and steal her breath — or maybe that was the clench of fear in her chest as the man silhouetted by flame began to rise, and she noticed his feet were bare, unharmed by twisted metal or open flame.

Cait's eyes did not illuminate much, and his back was to the flames, but she didn't need light to see the chill mako brightness of the Imbued's eyes.

"So," she said, all learned bravado (and wouldn't Reno be proud), "Which one are you?"

He cocked his head at her, bird-like, sending the crest of bright spikes wafting to one side. The blue eyes didn't blink, and the smile was wider than it had any right to be on a face so narrow and angular.

"Ifrit, I'll wager," Cait muttered. "Or is it Phoenix? Summons were never m' strongest point." His tail brushed her hip and the air around the Imbued's hands flared with heat and luminance; then everything was light and searing pain, the little cat's yowl and the smell of burning wires.

She writhed, blinking spots from her eyes, and feeling the slowly warming chill of painted concrete beneath her cheek, the pricks of pain from the fragments of her ex-mug, and the jarring ache of face meeting floor. Her hands were empty; the Glock was gone. Her head was full of noise, and as she crabbed sideways on the floor, she realised she was making some of it; a moan that would have done a ghoul proud, rasping through a throat that burned not from smoke but from pure, baking heat. There was something small and white in front of her; as her vision cleared she recognised Cait's paw, claws tweezed around a charred and twisted mem-card.

The rest of him smouldered and stank a few yards beyond it, crumpled against the console.

Elena grabbed the paw and rolled, trusting her jacket to protect her from the worst of the debris. The Glock was gone, she'd never find it in the half-light, but the door was just behind her, and if she could regain her footing—

She covered her head instinctively as she saw the sudden brightness, but the next blast of fire wasn't aimed at her; it went straight through the observation window, shattering the glass and destroying the pod behind it. The window exploded in a hail of tiny needles and pod shrapnel, and Elena slammed through the lab doors into the access ramp beyond just as the canisters that fed the pods ignited.

The wall held, but the doors didn't; Elena clawed at the inner handrail as she climbed, heedless of rust and sharp edges, her burned hip only now starting to scream for her attention. Her PHS wouldn't work down here; she had to get to the house, had to get to the others, out of the dark.

The elevator shaft spewed flame into the corridor, the damp Nibel rock throwing off steam that muffled her footsteps and soothed her aching throat even as it choked her. Not far to the junction, not far—

The enraged scream and the flare of light in the mist was her only warning. She threw herself flat as an enormous ball of flame shot out of the darkness at her back, ploughing into the wall to her right and melting rock like butter. She rolled, scrambled to her feet, darted right as she felt the wall dip away and screamed as her burned hip collided with the hand rail. 

The pain drove her to the ground; weeping, cursing, she dragged herself back up again and limped for the stairs. The PHS was in her hand before she reached them, the dim light from the screen illuminating her agonising progress up the stairs. She had never been so pleased to see the dingy little room with the ancient writing desk, or to see Valentine's pale, narrow face.

Cait's paw clenched in her fist, she dragged herself back against the wall. "Imbued," she said, and, "Fire," and then her vision swam.

Everything after that was someone else's problem.

* * *

"…s Gainsborough?"

Aeris blinked and returned to herself, kneeling in the grime that covered the floor of the archives, trying not to grimace at the damp suffusing her skirt. Sephiroth's eyes were yellowed by the light of the camp lantern, narrowed as he focused on her face.

"Problem?" he asked.

She shook her head, bringing her fingers to her right temple and pressing there firmly. "I don't know. The Planet speaks more clearly to me than it used to, but I still don't always understand what it's trying to say."

He paused in the act of stacking binders preparatory to carrying them upstairs into the manor, this time with pupils slightly flared. "But it is trying to say something."

"I…" The echoes in her head grew suddenly louder, so that the walls seemed to shake. Sephiroth grabbed at the shelves to steady them as they swayed and dipped. Aeris looked up at him, feeling her own eyes widen in the darkness. "That wasn't in my head."

"No."

Heavy footsteps at the door, and the light of Cloud's lantern appeared, lighting his hair into a spiked wreath. "Everything okay in here?" Another tremor, louder, ground through the chamber, and Aeris struggled to her feet, listening hard for his words past the screaming in her head.

"Something isn't right," she said, one hand pressing into her temple as if she could trap the sounds and look at them more closely. "Someone… the mountain…?"

Sephiroth and Cloud exchanged a glance. "We get out," Cloud decided. "Grab what you can carry and let's go."

She pointed to the sagging boxes she'd prepared for Cloud and worked her fingers cautiously between the covers of stacked binders; they were fibrous and crumbling, only just holding together, like root-bound soil. The shrieks and wails of the Planet had stopped, but in their place was a chilling silence, as if the whole green life force had turned away, closed its eyes. Her heart was in her throat.

"Cloud…"

"Get down." Sephiroth's voice cut across the thunder of the next tremor, and the earth leapt so violently beneath her feet that she dropped into a crouch, hunching forward over the papers in her arms.

In the light of the lanterns she saw a blur, heard Cloud grunt with pain. His binders crashed to the floor, sending up dust and scattering pages left and right. Aeris barely saw the flash of teeth and lipstick before the blur — human, or shaped like one — was gone again. A girlish giggle ricocheted off the walls, surrounding, dissipating, and then Sephiroth's head snapped right. He lunged.

Aeris saw long legs, yellow peep-toes, feathers, and then she was sprawling in the grime, head ringing with the impact.

"Cetra slaver," the girlish voice snarled with the rage of a child, and Aeris heard Cloud's footfalls just as the camp lantern was snatched up and dashed against the wall in a streak of light, and then darkness. A dark rumble filled the corridor, accompanied by distant gunfire, explosions. A scattering of stone and sand trickled down on her head, and she felt more than heard the 'pop' of displaced air to her left, the impact of a body into the wall.

"Cloud?"

A groan, a weak cough, the grind of earth under combat boots. Aeris focused her will between her palms, whispered flame to life, and had a bare second to blink in the light before the Chocobo-Imbued was on her again. She didn't need strength when she had momentum; Aeris felt her nails catch and tear like claws, heard the crunch as her shoulder hit the wall, and couldn't contain a yelp that turned into a moan as the fire flickered out and bright spots danced across her vision.

"So many gifts, all of them worthless," the Chocobo-Imbued hissed, and Aeris felt the gust of wind as she passed. Then she heard soft steps, the scrape of metal against stone. The Imbued's laughter was crueller this time, shorter.

"You think you stand a chance with a blade like that?" she taunted, and Aeris heard the scuffling of feet as the Imbued and Sephiroth clashed. Briefly, she glimpsed green witchlight, and as soon as she saw it, it was gone. He could see, she realised; not well, not clearly, but enough. And in seeing, gave his position away. Cloud's eyes had done the same, though their glow was not nearly as pronounced. She felt the wind stir again, heard the footsteps this time, another clash, another slip of Sephiroth's footing.

"You're too _slow_ ," she shrieked, triumphant, above the whistle of the blade—

—a soft, wet crunch—

—and she saw stars again as a blast of air smacked her head back into the wall.

In the silence that followed, Aeris listened as hard as she could, but the ringing and her heartbeat were so loud in her ears that she yelped when she felt long, cool fingers on her forehead.

"It's me. You're bleeding."

Staring at the twin points of green in the darkness, Aeris opened her mouth to respond, and was stopped by a scream that turned her bones to water. Sephiroth twisted toward the sudden flare of light, and then his hand was on the side of her head, pressing her face into his shoulder and shielding her from the worst as the world shook apart in a blast of steam and fire.

"What the hell—" Cloud's voice rasped. She was inclined to agree. But the scream hadn't stopped, and the flickering light was growing brighter through the fog; the heat was getting worse. Sephiroth hauled her to her feet, steadied her, and then pulled Cloud up as well.

"Careful of the body," he said, and she wished there were not just enough light to make it out.

Some parts of the growing glow were steady, red as embers; as they edged closer, she realised it was slowly cooling rock. "What…?" she began, fear creeping back up her spine, but Sephiroth's hand on her elbow urged her onward.

"No…" Cloud's footsteps faltered ahead of them, then broke into a run. "Tifa? _Tifa!_ "

Sephiroth moved. The mist flickered. Cloud and Sephiroth crashed and rolled just as a fireball the size of Aeris' head smashed into the rubble on their left, sending red-hot chips of super-heated stone in all directions. Aeris dashed them off her arms and legs, swiped frantic hands over her hair, and ran to tug Cloud to his feet.

"Come on!" she hissed, and together they limped and scrabbled and zigzagged along the corridor, enraged shrieks and blasts of flame following them to the foot of the stairs. Cloud pushed her up first, and she gathered her skirts nearly to her hips in her haste to have them out of her way, to be up and inside the house, out of the darkness.

As if it were safer there.

* * *

Barret trained Missing Score on the open passageway the moment they started hearing explosions. When they continued, Cid narrowed his eyes, hooked one thumb through his belt loop, and started trying to reach the only people with a hope in hell of receiving calls. Tifa didn't answer; not exactly a surprise, but enough to make him pissed at this region and its stinking piece-of-crap reception, and when Elena came scrambling and smoking up the staircase, making whimpering noises that sounded like they just happened when she breathed, he had to lunge at Barret and yank his gun-arm upward, just in case.

She was mostly intact, but from her right hip all the way up to her ribcage was angry, black and crispy, and she didn't seem too keen on bending. Behind him, he heard the hammer of Vincent's rifle cock, and the short, curt tone he adopted in only the direst of circumstances. Turks, he thought, and then all he could spare time for was holding tight to Elena's hand while she tried not to scream as he healed her.

He hadn't even made a full layer of shiny new scar tissue when Cloud's rough, tired voice said, "Coming up," and Aeris staggered into sight, blood streaming down the side of her face, Sephiroth a few steps behind her.

His gaze dropped to Elena, and then he turned back to the bookcase and heaved it shut.

Cid was on his feet trying to grab the bastard by the throat before he even properly realised what he was doing.

He'd have been embarrassed, but Barret had already slammed forward to pin the swordsman. Aeris was clawing at him, exhausted, nearly falling, and then Vincent appeared in their midst and hauled them apart like dogs who'd been scrapping over a bone, though Cid noticed the bronze claws stayed put pretty close to Sephiroth's throat.

Aeris dropped to the floor, tears leaking from her exhausted eyes. "The other tunnel," she began, and Cloud cut her off, sounding like it killed him to do it.

"The tunnel's collapsed. We need fire protection, right now."

Cid's hand was halfway to the pocket of his jacket when he realised, and from the look on Cloud's face, he'd thought of it, too.

"The mountain," he said, for all of them. The reactor team had all their fire-eating materia; they'd been the only ones going near any monsters.

They were silent, listening to the muffled booms and cracks from the underground. Cloud's face paled, and then set.

"Call the Turks. Evacuation orders. Cid, take Elena and as many folk as you can get on board Sierra and the hell away from here." He was too exhausted even to run a hand through his hair. "Tell Reno I want a chopper on that mountain, and emergency medical crews standing by."

"Medical and fire crews," Sephiroth amended, and Cid had a sudden, vivid memory of standing too close to a test rocket, combined with the blackened flesh on Elena's side. He knelt to gather her carefully to his chest, and felt something snag in the back of his throat when he spotted the tiny scrap of black and white fur poking out between her fingers.

"They got the cat," he said, before he could think to keep his mouth shut, and he felt the silence settle around them like wet cement.

It was a fucking useless shield.

* * *

Cloud's sword looked wrong in Sephiroth's hands, clumsy, perhaps excessive, but Vincent thought not. These Imbued were a danger, even in the demon's estimation.

Chaos blazed through every vein, focused and still as only a predator could be. Vincent's pupils were flared wide to take in light and movement; Sephiroth's had lost their reptilian slits. They waited, silent and still, as the blasts came closer.

They did not wait long.

The first sign was the hiss of air through the shelves as it vented from the stairwell, the accompanying rumble and vibration as something impacted foundation stone. Then air turned to steam and Vincent raised one hand to shield his face as the bookcase went up in burning splinters.

The man that stepped out of the stairwell was ablaze to the elbows. Flames licked up the sides of his neck, into his hair, past eyes the bright blue of electricity. He was young, no older than Cloud, and the tears that spilled from his eyes sizzled and burst into steam before they had run all the way to his chin.

"You killed her," he said, and the age-old guilt lodged in Vincent's throat, but the Imbued was staring at Sephiroth.

The swordsman made no excuse, no apology, only waited with his blade at the ready. Vincent saw the rage spill into the Imbued's face half a second before the flame around him became a corona that burned white instead of red.

The demon drove him forward, hooked fingers around Sephiroth's forearm, struck at the window with bronze claws. They were already falling when the explosion came, but Vincent felt the heat through his cloak, his shirt, the leather and bronze of his boots heating past discomfort and nearly into pain. The vegetable patch had not been much, and Vincent was glad he had never gotten around to staking up the tomatoes; they were not a pleasant landing, but neither of them would be skewered; at least, not from below.

The sounds that the house made were terrible, cracks and shrieks as wood and metal were wrenched apart. Sephiroth was running and Vincent was behind him, staring as the firestorm destroyed first the west wing, then the rest. He heard the shattering of glass, the tiles on the roof, felt the shards graze his neck, his cheek, but the fire didn't stop with the house. Nibelheim was dryer than it had been in years, untouched by the storm that had threatened them for weeks, and the Imbued's fire burned hot enough to turn any remaining moisture into explosive bursts of steam.

Vincent saw a human shape emerge, white with heat, great wings of flame shooting from its outstretched fingertips. He lost grip on his human shape just as those great wings beat.

* * *

Elena's hands went to her mouth as fire engulfed not just the manor but the houses and stores around it, swept aside and torn apart as if by some great hand. People still streamed through the streets, hauling children and pets behind them. Nibelheim had grown terribly used to emergencies.

Then the manor and the grounds behind it began to sag, to crumble. She could see the trees shake and topple in the woods behind the village, a trail toward the mountain for those that cared to look for it.

Beside her, Feather peered over the rail, pale green eyes wide, tears gathering in the corners.

"It's okay," Elena told her, already feeling the drugs beginning to fade. She needed to sit down. She clung to the railing and squeezed the soft, synthetic paw in her pocket. "Everything's going to be fine."

* * *

[Day 12, 1730 Nibel Standard Time]

"It's the first time only half the village has gone up in flames," a woman joked tiredly behind Aeris, and she felt Sephiroth's stillness as though he'd frozen in place. She reached out a hand and laid it over his knuckles, giving them a gentle squeeze. His fingers twitched, then lay still.

The rescue effort was considerable; given its history, Nibelheim had more than its fair share of fire and rescue volunteers. For a fire this size, the number of casualties was impressively small, largely because of the wide berth given to the manor over the past decades. Aeris supposed it was one good thing to come out of the Shinra settling here.

The injuries had been relatively minor; burns, smoke inhalation, more than a few concussions as burning structures collapsed, and one old woman with severe enough respiratory problems that Aeris had sent her and her granddaughter on to Rocket Town with Cid. All in all, they were doing well.

But 'all in all' didn't account for Tifa, Yuffie, and Nanaki. It didn't account for the tight, distant expression on Cloud's face as he lent whatever aid he could to the villagers in distress, or the blank, grey cast to Barret's eyes as he waited for news they had no guarantee would come.

Sephiroth tried to pull his fingers away, but she held on until he looked at her.

"It wasn't your fault," she said simply, and his face darkened for an instant before returning to its blank veneer.

"It may not have been my fault," he said. "But it was my responsibility." He looked out at the darkened, smouldering village, and hunched forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "They all were."

"I'd have thought Zack would take that as a challenge," she said lightly, and watched his pupils narrow, his face go carefully blank. "If it would help… I mean, I think it would. To talk about it."

"I don't know how it could."

Aeris tugged her knees up to her chest, toes in the dirt, watching the stars as she considered. "He talked about you a lot, y'know. How you'd drill them differently, how you cut right to the heart of some misapplied strategy, how you'd look at him after he'd done something… something _Zack_." Her lips curled upward with the memory. "After a while, it almost seemed like I knew you myself."

Sephiroth's face was still blank, but she was sure he was listening.

"And then one day I saw one of those candids," she continued. "The fan clubs and the junk they used to circulate… eventually I'd use the paper as part of my mulch. I don't know what you were doing in a coffee shop in sector four, but someone had this shot of you reading a newspaper, and the expression on your face… I realised I did know you, after all." She saw his shoulders pull taut, and reached out to smooth the tension. "You were there the night my mother escaped. You lied for us."

Sephiroth snorted. "And you lived a long, happy life until I slaughtered you on Jenova's altar."

She punched him in the arm. He rocked with the impact and finally, finally looked at her.

"That was a clone," she said, and held up her hand to forestall any argument. "No. Listen. No matter what you may have seen, no matter whose memories you wound up with, you were frozen in materia. Whatever connection you had, or have, or whatever, you are not a clone any more than Zack was."

Sephiroth took a deep breath, as if he needed to shore up his defences before he spoke. His eyes went far away and considering.

Then, abruptly, they focused. "Fire."

"What?" Aeris was on her feet in an instant, staring through the dusk for flame or smoke.

"No—" Sephiroth touched her arm, turned her back toward the mountain. "There. Two-thirds up."

A tiny, flickering light, barely visible, on the mountain. Aeris didn't notice how hard her fingers were digging into his hand until he twisted his fingers from her grip.

"It's them," she said, doubt and relief warring in her voice. "Get the helicopter team. There's rain on the way, and we'll never find them if that fire goes out."

* * *

[Day 12, 1900 Nibel Standard Time

The forest was quiet after the fire, and portions of it still steamed as the rain seeped deeper into the debris. The cloaked man chose his footing carefully, but never seemed to pause, his movements a constant, inexorable flow.

The edge of the manor grounds came and went. He crossed the smoking courtyard and picked his way through the rubble. Steam rose up in thick plumes around him, eliminating the few lights left in the village almost entirely, and hiding him completely from their sight.

At last he paused, knelt, and began to set pieces of the wreckage aside. The area around him reeked of charred foodstuffs and mildew; when he had pulled enough rubble aside, he dusted his fingers on the cloth covering his thighs and leaned forward to lift the child into his arms.

The boy was thin; emaciated, really. His ginger hair was streaked with soot, and the skin around those bright blue eyes was drawn so taut that they could hardly close.

The cloaked man scooped a hand through the air, and the raindrops gathered obediently in his palm. He trickled water into the boy's gaping mouth, then climbed slowly to his feet and turned back toward the forest.

Something bright gleamed in the corner of the boy's left eye; the cloaked man touched a finger to it, and hissed when bright blood welled from his fingertip.

"Ashura, forgive us," he said.


	18. Leviathan's Daughter

[Day 13, 0500 Nibel Standard Time]

Tifa woke with her face buried in a sack of fragrant dried greens, and Cloud’s arm hot and tight about her waist. The thick blanket between them and the straw was rough, but comfortable enough that she wouldn't, ordinarily, have wanted to move. Ordinarily, she wouldn't have a wrenched shoulder and battered ribs to think about.

"Cloud," she murmured, shifting, and stifled a wince when he nuzzled her shoulder. "Off, please."

"Mmm...?" She felt his eyelashes flutter against her shoulder, and then he startled and lifted his arm away. "Damn. Sorry, Teef."

She smiled and ruffled his hair with her good arm, then set about stretching gingerly. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, but having to haul Yuffie back through the caves had not been pretty. If they hadn't had Red's eyes and nose... if they hadn't found the mako fountain... The shiver made all her injuries twinge.

"You should rest," Cloud said, voice still threaded with sleep. Cautiously, Tifa rotated her arm, getting a feel for her range of motion. She tilted her head, brought her knees up to her chest.

"Actually, I think I'll be okay." She leaned in to kiss him, slow and sure. "Might need your help with my bra, though."

"Oh," said Cloud, the corner of his mouth tugging upward. "Well, let me see what I can do."

She grinned and pushed herself up and out of the make-shift bed, pausing to tug her bedclothes into place before she wandered out into the hold, bare feet chilled by the metal floor.

The bridge was smaller on Sierra, more cramped, but it seemed to make Cid more prone to nesting; he was slumped in his chair by the steering column, booted feet up, empty thermos discarded on the floor. The sun wouldn't hit him for an hour or so; there were always too many mountains in the way. In a sense, Nibelheim was nearly as suffocating as Midgar had been.

Tifa passed him quietly, slipped down to stare out of the bridge over what remained of the town. It felt terrible even to think it, but it hadn't fared too badly this time.

Little was left of the manor but blackened lines of stone blocks and rubble to indicate where it once had been. Even the stone of the tower, the building's foundations, had not survived unscathed. The grounds were scorched; the outer walls, blackened and crumbled where the stonework had been weak.The iron gates were sagging and twisted, their lower halves coiling on the blackened earth.

The houses beyond it were in varying conditions, depending on how close they'd been to the gates, or the gaps in Vincent's walls. Around the gate, they'd been mostly destroyed; no one who had resettled here after Meteor could have afforded the masonry that might have kept their homes steady in the firestorm, no matter the rebates Reeve and the Mayor had tried to finagle. Further on, only portions of the houses had been consumed. Further still, there were only black smears as ash clung to rough surfaces and paint shrivelled and cracked in the heat but didn't exactly burn.

Tifa crossed her arms under her breasts, cautious of the pull in her shoulder, and took one step back, then another. She tore her eyes away just as Cid gave a choking snort and jerked upright, goggles all but invisible in the mess of his hair.

"Hell. Morning already?" He eyed the tableau with as much joy as she had, mouth twisting in discontent. "Some view."

Tifa climbed the short staircase to his post, and turned to look again. It was just as disheartening the second time around. "Yeah."

"You feelin' all right?"

She couldn't shrug, but she see-sawed a hand at him. "Good enough."

"How's the kid?"

Tifa's hand clenched before she could stop it. "I... haven't checked yet."

Cid snorted, sat a little straighter, and groped for his boots. "Ain't right, her lyin' still. Sign of the goddamn apocalypse."

* * *

Even in sleep, Yuffie had always twitched and kicked and muttered. Her expressive face dipped here and crinkled there like a sideshow mask, even when it wasn't under her conscious control. Her sheets were invariably twisted, as if she needed to practice her gymnastic feats in sleep as well as on waking in order to maintain them.

This stillness was no sleep.

Her pallor unnerved him, and her stillness unnerved the Galian Beast. Four times Vincent had stopped his hand before it reached to rest on her limp forearm, to paw at it as if the beast were nothing but a hound pining for attention, mourning for its fallen pack mate.

_Not fallen._ A flash of tattered shadows, eyes pinpoints of red behind a cracked and faded mask. Vincent clenched his hand into a fist upon one knee.

She was not silent, either. They could hear the sigh of her breath and, if they strained, the still-strong beat of her heart. But they had no sense of when she would wake, and it was that uncertainty that kept the demons at the back of his mind.

If he was not careful, the buzzing, grieving drone of Death Gigas began to issue from his throat, as if he were a transceiver, nothing more, for the restlessness of demons.

The dream — flailing limbs he recognised on waking, distant gods on the march — was undoubtedly Chaos's doing. It had foreseen this, somehow. He could feel it beneath the surface of his mind, dormant but aware, its reptilian gaze cold on the back of his eyes.

It had known. It had told him. Why hadn't he listened?

He straightened at the sound of footsteps along the corridor outside, and glanced up at the knock. The door hissed open to reveal Tifa, hair spilling freely over her shoulders — too sore to braid it, Vincent thought — the fine, dark strands catching even on the fibres of her use-softened night shirt.

"Hey," she murmured, slipping inside and moving to the end of Yuffie's bunk. "Any change?"

"Not yet."

"You should get some rest, Vincent. You look..." She hesitated a moment too long, dark eyes flicking over his face, the hand clamped on his thigh. "...like you need it."

He considered telling her, then, that the demons had been lively since the Imbued had first begun to threaten; now that he had come into combat with one of them, his mind was full of whispers, murmurs, snarls. He considered telling her about the dream, about the warning that Chaos had tried to give him about the coming firestorm, about Yuffie's fall.

"After you've eaten," he said, at length. "I will stay until then."

* * *

[Day 13, 1100 Nibel Standard Time]

Reeve had sent for reinforcements and supplies. Until they arrived, there wasn't much the villagers could do, but they hadn't looked like waiting was an option, and the Turks had already seen what happened when you let people do their own salvage work: more damn salvage work, and morons with sheared metal through their legs.

Elena was half sitting on, half kneeling by a chair out front of the twisted gates of the manor; a few solid Cures had done wonders for the burns, but her hip still hurt like it had been coated with hot glass and then shattered. She couldn't quite walk on it, especially not on uneven ground, so she was trying to keep it at a pretty neutral angle.

From here, she was high enough to see most of the crews digging through the rubble. There were three groups checking the houses for survivors and supplies, about a dozen villagers in all. Reno, Lana, and Barret each headed up a crew of four or five villagers. Aeris stood by, ready to heal survivors in need of assistance, but so far the only one had been a dog, a skinny brindle bitch whose pups hadn't made it, and who now lay dejectedly at Aeris's feet, refusing to move unless the Cetra did. 

Every now and then, the searchers found a body. A bent, craggy woman from the local Omni chapter sat under her tiny awning with a gangly twenty-something from the general store, and radioed every now and again to let her know when the bodies had been identified, and how she could find the next-of-kin.

Mostly, with the newer settlers, she couldn't. Wherever they'd come from, they hadn't wanted to go back, and she knew for a fact that Reeve had made it as easy as possible to get started here, even with no kind of paper trail.

The President seemed to be taking their destruction as a personal affront; he was down in the square, divvying up supplies and organising shelter, no longer seeming to care about keeping a low profile. Rude was with him, she knew, but after the collapse of the tunnels, the houses... She couldn't be anything but anxious. And she just kept thinking about Tseng.

Over to her right, one of the villagers waved to get her attention, then crossed his arms in an 'x' over his head. Elena's pen traced over the rough map of the village, and she put a line through the fourth house on the right. She raised an arm to let him know she'd seen him, and the man turned back to join the rest of his group in shoring up the next house along.

When she returned her gaze to the road from the square, Rude was walking with his head down, his stride long but unhurried. She smiled at the sight. When he wasn't chasing a target, he kept his gaze a few feet in front of him, lowered so as not to intimidate people more than his size already did. It was almost sweet.

He raised his head when he got closer, and she raised a hand once she realised she was his target.

"How's it going down there?" she asked when he was close enough, and he shrugged, held out a steamed-up container of something Wutaian and a thermos.

She split the cheap wedged chopsticks and dug in gratefully, ducking her head to keep sauce spatter to a minimum. States of emergency did not tend to include dry cleaning facilities, and she got the feeling they were going to be on constant PR duty on this one. She swigged molten coffee, eyes watering as she swallowed, and had to fan her face briskly to avoid losing any mascara.

Rude watched her performance with a perfect poker face. Only the relaxed slump of his shoulders showed his amusement. She toasted him with the thermos, and left the cap off to get it down to a drinkable temperature.

"Anything new?" She did her best at a Reno eyebrow wiggle. "How's Tifa?"

That shrug again. "Busy."

"Soup kitchen'll do that to you, I guess." She wished she were half as busy up here. Watching for their search parties was hardly the most engaging work, and she'd always had a tendency toward multitasking.

Rude was watching her again, this time like he was trying to figure something out. She supposed it was when he couldn't that he leaned forward, elbows on knees, and twitched his eyebrows upward, infinitesimally. She faltered with the thermos halfway to her mouth, looking down at the village and setting it on her knees, cupped in both hands.

"We weren't expecting this," she said. "I mean, we were. We were expecting something, but we were nowhere near prepared. How do you prepare for something like that? And now..."

Her gaze dropped to Cait's paw, lying next to her plastic container like a strange talisman. She'd braided the resistor cables that had come away from Cait's body with the paw, looped them around the tiny, delicate wrist like every half-assed friendship bracelet of her childhood. She'd never been much good at those; the bracelets or the friendships, and then suddenly someone had punched her in the chest and she could hardly breathe for the pain of it.

"I kn-know he was just a robot," she said, words coming jerkily even though there were no tears. "I know that. There are half a dozen just like him, and Reeve has him in version control, but I just—"

"It could have been any of us," Rude said, and Elena shuddered with the effort of keeping her tears from falling. Carefully, she nodded, and nearly lost it all over again when Rude reached out, slowly and deliberately, and laid a hand on her shoulder.

"None of us can take another Tseng," he said. "Take care of yourself, Elena."

* * *

[Day 13, 1500 Nibel Standard Time]

She woke over-warm and groggy, photosensitive enough that it hurt to look at the paper taped above her bunk (Marlene's Vlakorados usually looked like a carnivorous tomato, but right now Yuffie couldn't tell). Her first real breath turned into a cough halfway through, and then there was kneading against the mattress at her hip, heavy damp breath and a rumbling purr by her shoulder. She fisted a hand in Red's mane while she tried to force her body to stop coughing and jerking and just breathe.

How Nanaki could stand to be near her in this condition she just plain did not know, unless he'd been lying about his sense of smell all this time. She was stiffer than dried seaweed and about three times as stanky.

"Hey," she croaked. "I almost can't smell your dog breath, I need a shower so bad. This is kinda sweet."

Nanaki head-butted her gently under the chin, wet nose tinglingly cold from the air conditioning, and Yuffie thought, oh. Fever. "You make a good blanket," she said. "I guess it would be unethical to clone you for fur, but maybe we can vat-grow it without your ridiculous intellect and terrifying claws or something. Or, here's a thought: _claw blankets_. The hoodie'd teens of Edge would go berserk."

At this, Red snorted, head-butted her again, and slipped from her bunk murmuring something about taking away her medication. He returned a few minutes later with Aeris at his heels, and promptly stepped up onto the bunk again, presumably to compress all the blood from her feet and make sure she didn't escape her sickbed sooner than she needed to. They knew her too well. Aeris had already broken out her Serious Bedside Manner face.

Ashura, she had missed that face.

"Hey, Nurse," she said, bright as she could manage. "I thought we agreed on sexier uniforms?"

"I thought we agreed that would break Cloud?" Aeris plunked into the chair next to her and brushed a hand over the sweaty locks sticking to her forehead. "I'll need to change your dressing again..."

"Dressing?" Yuffie hadn't even really noticed she had a wound. She started with her numb, needly toes and worked her way up while Aeris ferreted around in Sierra's compartments and wondered aloud who had stocked the medical supplies. She started noticing the tension around thigh-level, and by the time she got to her shoulder blades the dull burning had her hissing at the imagined pain that particular flex would have caused if she hadn't been drugged to the gills. "Okay, I'm still a little hazy. How'd that happen?"

"You were thrown into a pod," Nanaki said. "Your shoulder bled heavily, but the environment was far from clean."

"You've been in and out of fever sleep since we found you," Aeris put in. "And that was after Tifa dragged you through the caverns for eight odd hours getting to somewhere she'd be able to signal us."

"You've been out most of a full day," Red finished, in response to her opening mouth. "And Tifa's fine."

"Just sore," Aeris confirmed. Then her Serious Bedside Manner came back for an encore, and she slapped both hands down on her knees. "Now. Can you roll over on your own, or do you want us to do it for you?"

* * *

After they'd finished torturing her with arcane medical practices (she knew restore materia was indiscriminate, she knew that, but she also knew that Cid had had a damn sight more morphine with him the last time something this fucked up had happened), Aeris brought her lukewarm chamomile and a peanut butter sandwich even though Yuffie made puppy eyes when she heard Tifa was out there making soup for ungrateful Nibelians.

It had been long enough since she'd had a sandwich that the peanut butter was pretty good, even if the chewing hurt her face. She sucked on the crust until it was damp enough to mash against the roof of her mouth with her tongue and tried to ignore the squirm of painkillers mixing with bread and tea in her stomach.

Oh, the glamour of AVALANCHE.

She hadn't been expecting anyone for the night shift; Aeris seemed to have more poor slobs with broken bones and concussions to deal with than Yuffie had secret pockets, and Red had grudgingly agreed that he should be out helping the villagers. She couldn't think of anything appropriately witty to say about that, so she'd noogied him instead (as well as anyone could noogie with two of their best fingers taped up and Aeris giving them both ferocious orderly face from the door. When they'd both gone, she'd sat and stared at nothing, and eventually covered her eyes with her hands, because the bright, spiralling patterns behind her eyelids were interesting, and hurt about the same as the fluorescent lighting.

She hadn't been expecting anyone, but she definitely hadn't been expecting to blink awake to Sierra's night-time dimmed cabin and discover Vincent at her bedside, eyeballing her empty cup of chamomile.

"Uh," she said, and Vincent passed her a glass of water before she could start coughing. She sipped, and continued with, "Hey, monster man. I guess Aeris didn't tell you about the uniforms."

Vincent took the glass of water back. "I have worn all the uniforms I intend to wear. Do you need anything?"

"A bath?" Yuffie said, and then remembered that she wasn't actually wearing much of a shirt, just bandages. "Uh. Assurances and tribute for the House of Kisaragi?"

Vincent started tugging off his glove.

"Uh, by which I mean we never tell the council you have seen me without a shirt. Or about that time in Gold Saucer, although I'm pretty sure Gold Saucer doesn't actually count and Vincent I am actually not so bored I need a strip tease although even if I were this would not be the most exciting one ever because I have it on reliable authority that gloves do not go fir—"

His bare hand brushed the hair from her forehead, and long, warm fingers brushed her forehead. Then he frowned. "You do not appear to be feverish."

"Nope," she agreed. "Just eighteen and Princess Regent and really, really over that conversation. What's happening?"

Vincent replaced his glove so painstakingly that she opened her mouth to repeat the question. Then his eyes caught hers, and her stomach rolled.

"The Imbued were... thorough." Vincent said. "Cait Sith has been destroyed, but the rest are safe. Cloud and Sephiroth believe that the Chocobo-Imbued was felled, and fire seems to have consumed the other. The blaze was intense enough to do it."

Understanding settled, cold and thick in her throat. "The manor's gone, isn't it." She couldn't look at Vincent's face. Something terrible was burning in her chest, thudding hot and painful around her heart.

"Yes, Yuffie."

"The labs? Did we—" _Did anything get out? Was anything saved?_

"...I'm sorry."

"You stupid son of a bitch, as if it's _your_ fault," Yuffie hissed, choking out words through frustration and shock. Tears beaded hot at the corners of her eyes. She pressed her fists into her eye sockets. "How can there— how can there be _nothing_? D-don't we have _backups_ or _notes_ o-or—"

"We have memory, and a good idea of where to go next," Vincent said. He didn't touch her, but she heard him shift in his chair to hunch over his knees. "We will find him, Yuffie."

She snorted, and then made a gurgling sound of dismay and misery as her nose leaked all over her hands. "You just tried to cheer me up. We have hit the lowest of lows. Vincent Valentine, Master of Misery, Duke of Doom-and-Gloom, needs to give a pep talk. Is the world ending again?"

The sound of paper towels being torn from a roll, and a scrunching by her ear as he left them on her pillow. "Not yet," he said.

She took the paper towels, trying to spare him the sight of her mucused-up face and hands, and scrubbed. Under the scratchy cover of cheap paper towels, she said, "'m sorry about your house."

Vincent's chair scraped as he stood. "It doesn't matter."

The sound of his boots kept her company after he'd gone.

* * *

Late in the morning, Tifa woke her for another sandwich and painful hugs that went on a lot longer than they probably needed to but left Yuffie feeling like they could have gone a lot longer and she wouldn't have minded much. She envied Marlene sometimes.

Her second peanut butter sandwich was no more satisfying than the first, and Tifa was strangely more susceptible to her puppy eyes than Aeris had been (although this may have been because Tifa had taken care of Yuffie during enough awful air and sea voyages that she knew exactly what happened to Yuffie's irritation level when she stayed in bed for more than 24 hours). Once she had drunk her water, swallowed her capsules, dutifully let Tifa prod at her bandages and get a second opinion (from Aeris, who clicked her tongue and muttered and finally gave her assent), she was allowed to hobble with them out to the galley, where Nanaki immediately tried to head-butt both her kneecaps into powder.

Just before noon, when she was still knee deep in purring red fur and starting to burst at the seams from Tifa's soup and fresh, hot tea, there came the sound of a dozen clompy boots up the gangplank, and she twisted in her chair to wave at Reeve and the Turks as they entered the war room-cum-dining hall, Feather trailing awkwardly behind.

"Working hard as usual, Kisaragi," Reno grouched, dropping his lanky frame over the back of a chair.

"Sorry, Turk," she said. "I didn't hear you over the sound of a fourth bowl calling my name. How much did you say you missed me?"

Reeve ruffled her hair as he passed, gentler than she'd expect from him or his counterpart. She really must've had them worried. "When are you rebuilding my partner in crime?"

"When I figure out how to wire in a recorder he can't hack." He sat down on her right and, to all appearances, became hypnotised by the sheaf of paper he'd brought with him, although he opened his mouth to receive a toast soldier obediently enough when Reno prodded him in the cheek with it.

"Is he, y'know," Yuffie swept the table with her hand. "Totally gone? Wiped?"

"Pretty much," Elena said, at the same time as Reeve said, "He sent me all the good photos," and Tifa dropped a dish towel on his head.

"No papers at the table," she scolded. "And I'll want to _see_ those photos before our next meet-up, thanks very much."

"They're very tasteful," Reeve reassured her through a mouthful of toast, absently holding the cloth out of his face. "Sort of sepia by way of damp shower curta— oh, hey, Cloud."

Yuffie twisted in time to catch Cloud's wry expression as he came into the narrow room. He passed an arm around Tifa's waist, raised an eyebrow at the dish towel, and inhaled appreciatively. "Smells great. Can I get some to go?"

"No." Tifa slipped from his grasp and tweaked his nose. "You can sit down for ten minutes and enjoy your meal with the rest of us civilised folk."

Elena and Reno snorted in unison, and then became intensely interested in their toast as Tifa shot them a Look. Yuffie bit the inside of her lips to keep the smirk off her face.

The rest of AVALANCHE filtered into the room in twos and threes, Cid looking like he hadn't bothered to sleep or shave since Leviathan carved his first riverbed, Sephiroth trailing Aeris like a particularly pale and looming guard hound.

He fixed on Yuffie with curious intensity, eating in thoughtful silence until Yuffie finally said, "Did I forget to take a tube off?"

He set the spoon he'd been using on the table. "'Leviathan's Daughter'," he said, and Yuffie felt her eyebrows crawl up to her hairline and stay there.

"Well. Technically, I guess, sure," she said.

She hadn't been expecting the rest of the room to leap on that like the last donut.

"So you do know what it means?"

"—thought it _had_ to be something, but—"

"—so damn secretive all the time—"

"Whoa, whoa!" Yuffie blinked at the lot of them, holding up her hands. "You'd think you were all Wutaian history buffs or something. What's the deal?"

"The Imbued," Tifa said. "She called you that when she attacked. You don't remember?"

Yuffie almost felt Aeris trying to glare her back into bed. "Sure I remember. I just, I mean, it didn't seem like the most important thing at the time?"

"What does it mean?" Cloud tugged his coffee closer, hunching forward over the mug. "Sephiroth has... a theory."

Yuffie shot the swordsman a look, but Sephiroth was waiting for her to speak. They all were. She shrugged, wishing she had more to tell them.

"It's not exactly ancient history, but it might as well be," she said. "It's one of those things no one talks about any more. See, I'm not just a Kisaragi. I'm also what Wutaians call _Leviathangeh_."

Sephiroth nodded at her words, and sat a little easier. Cloud's frown only deepened. "Leviathan what?"

"It means 'Leviathan-kin'," Yuffie said. "There are a tonne of legends associated with it, but the duty of Leviathangeh is basically to keep Leviathan happy — give offerings, perform rituals, observe the festival days, stuff like that. Traditionally, it's one of the only roles passed down through the female line." Trying not to look at Sephiroth, she said, "My mother was the last trained Leviathangeh. I learned the dance, and I'm sure the elders still remember the festivals, but it's..."

"It died with the war," Sephiroth finished.

She nodded. "The _first_ war."

Cloud spread his hands. "So how does this fit with your theory?"

"Wutai has its own legends, but much of the mythology that developed on the Planet is remarkably similar," Sephiroth began. "Before we discovered the existence of the Ancients, most of the cultures on the Planet believed that she was the ultimate creator and cultivator of our world. In the beginning, it was simple: earth, water, air. But as more and more complex phenomena were created, the Planet gave birth to sons and daughters to aid her in her duties, many of which later came to be revered as gods."

"The Summons," Tifa said, dropping into a seat near Cloud with the last of the soup. Sephiroth nodded.

"We know, or at least strongly suspect, that the Ancients put their knowledge into materia in order to keep it safe for coming generations. But why Summons?" He looked around the table at their blank faces, and answered his own question. "Not to preserve them for us, but to preserve us from them. We are all well acquainted with the consequences of gods walking the Planet."

"That's why she called me a slaver," Aeris said at last, eyes widening. "The Ancients were responsible for sealing the Summons in materia in the first place!"

"It also suggests a very different relationship between the Imbued and the Summon," Reeve said, plainly intrigued by the theory. "They see themselves in partnership with the gods."

"They are not the first." Sephiroth looked from Reeve to Cloud, and to Vincent. "You were held captive in a large, remote facility. When would you say it was built?"

Reeve blinked, and grinned sheepishly. "Actually, it depends on the location whose laws they were following at the time. At a guess, it would have been state-of-the-art about... half a century ago, give or take?"

"A facility that large, in that location," Sephiroth repeated. "Would have been no less than state-of-the-art. Who built it?"

"You don't need to lead us through everything," Elena said. "Shinra was in its infancy back then, but its grandfather company wasn't. Who else had the resources?"

Silence.

Sephiroth tapped the surface of the table. "Records from Gast indicate that the secondary lab was abandoned and sealed nearly thirty years ago."

"Gast was killed a little under twenty-three years ago," Aeris said. "You're saying before he found Ifalna, he was...?" She looked disturbed by the thought.

"They pumped me full of Jenova cells because they believed she was an Ancient." Sephiroth shrugged. "It seems no great leap of intuition to suppose that the Imbued were a prelude to that."


	19. Tinker, Tailor

[Day 15, 1445 Midgar Standard Time]

In the end, they headed for Midgar. The abandoned Shinra building was the last bastion of relevant information available to them, and after Nibelheim, Yuffie figured, they were running out of places they all loathed.

The city had always been full of scavengers, and its corpse was no different. Even with rubble piled sky-high, it probably held enough in abandoned tech to give every Meteor orphan a solid entry into Mideel real estate. The city's current population reflected that: anyone with a pickup truck and a healthy disregard for tetanus tended to drop by on a regular basis and see what they could sift out of the wreckage.

She didn't think anyone begrudged them. Midgar had been the 'city of the future' so long it had almost stopped being real. If anyone had tried to pick through the remains of Wutai for profit, she'd cut off both their thumbs, but Midgar… well, there were reasons the City of the Ancients had seemed so eerily familiar.

Cid brought them down well inside the city limits, on a stretch of highway that had managed to stay nearly whole when it crashed down on the slums beneath it. "It's not safe to get closer in a craft this size," a chagrined Reeve explained to Cloud. "We, er, lost a number of choppers trying to touch down higher up, and things won't have gotten more stable in the interim."

Cloud eyed the distance between them and the central column, and glanced at Tifa for an estimate. The brunette tilted her head and gnawed at her lip as she considered.

"Not today. We might make it _there_ before dark if we start out early tomorrow," she said doubtfully, and Yuffie stifled a groan. More waiting! _My favourite._

"I _think_ I might have a…" Reno began, just as Lana cleared her throat. They glanced at each other, and Lana shrugged. "…a solution for that," he continued, as if he'd never paused. "There's a place me and my folks were, uh, familiar with, way back when. It may actually have survived all this, and it's more or less on the way to the column. Might be a good place to set up camp."

"Can we get there today?"

Reno scratched at his chin. "Well… problem is, I never came at it from this angle, just from Sector Four. I can probably find it before sundown, but I don't want to get anyone's hopes up."

Halfway through doing just that, Yuffie's hopes deflated. And then Lana snorted, and muttered something under her breath.

Reno froze, and shot her a glance over his shoulder. "You say something, Meltzer?"

"Tinker, tailor," she repeated in a sing-song lilt, lips twisted upward at the corners. Reno at first stared, and then grinned.

"No shit," he said. "Well, between the two of us we oughta be—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Cid interjected. "What the hell was that about?"

"We were thinkin' of the same place." Lana rolled her shoulders. "Lotta street gangs in this city, some of 'em nastier than others. This place… it was a kind of safe house."

"I am shocked," Yuffie said. "Shocked and appalled that you were in street gangs _and never told me_."

Cloud, determined to be the serious one despite the smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, said, "Can you get us there?"

"Don't see why not," Lana said. She walked closer to the edge of the highway, peering around for landmarks. "From here… well, it's gonna be dark when we get there, I think, but yeah. We can do it if we get moving soon."

"Let's go, then." Cloud's eyes narrowed. "Cid, are you going to want to stay with Sierra?"

"Reckon the boys can handle her while she's grounded," the pilot said, rubbing vaguely at his elbow. "Unless you want a few of us on standby up here?"

"No," Cloud said. "But make sure they stay in radio contact." 

_We don't want to be a day's hike from our shitty little med bay,_ Yuffie filled in in her head, and clapped her hands. "So, is that it? Can we get going?"

"Why don't you go with the Turks to scout the way," Cloud said pointedly. She could have cheered.

* * *

"So when were you in a street gang? What was it called? Did you have _gruesome_ initiation rituals?"

"Kisaragi, I swear to god…"

" _What._ You can't deny me my questions just as you guys finally become _interesting_ , jeez. Did you have to get tattoos?"

"We had to train," Lana said. "Sometimes, we made a game of it. Know what it was called?"

Yuffie shook her head and turned to watch the black woman's deadpan expression.

" _The quiet game._ "

"Psssshyeah," Yuffie said. "Like _that_ has ever worked."

"Of all the times to have no Seal materia," Lana muttered.

Elena, suppressing the urge to grin, said, "I really don't know what your problem is, Reno. These all sound like perfectly legitimate questions to me." Yuffie made a totally discreet high-fiving motion in her general direction.

"We shoulda left you both tied to that rock," Reno muttered. "The lay of the land has changed pretty fuckin' significantly thanks to a giant flaming ball of rock, so can you all just shut up and let us concentrate?"

"Touchy, touchy," Yuffie sang, but because she really didn't want to sleep in the _Hotel de Rusted Metalle_ , she shut up and let him concentrate.

After about four minutes of Reno glaring back at her suspiciously, he cracked.

"Okay," he said. "See that graffiti? Looks like a needle and thread?"

It looked like the character for 'five' to Yuffie, but she shrugged and nodded. "That's a tailor's mark, 'tailor' meaning rent boy or drug mule or burglar or whatever the hell else. Those are the marks I follow. Meltzer probably had something else."

"Seamstress," Lana confirmed. "Barrels wrapped in wire near street signs or on power poles. 'Spect some of them have gone to hold fuel or water after Meteor, but we might see a couple around."

"There were a few places to go in," Reno continued. "Most of 'em looked like little shacks from the outside, nothing to make anyone suspicious, but the whole thing covered… what, half a block?"

"Something like that." Lana shrugged. "I was still pretty young when I left it. Probably seemed a lot bigger at the time."

Yuffie looked from one to the other, eyebrows raised. "How do you get from possibly-rent boy to the Turks?" Ignoring the tight feeling in her throat, ignoring the burn of tears at the corners of her eyes. "If this is how you hire your armies, I need to go back to Wutai and laugh at Gorky's grave _forever_."

"The hiring plans and policies of Shinra Incorporated are private and confidential," Reno muttered, the beginning of a well-learned mutter, and then paused. "Huh. I think I might see an entrance. Meltzer, you see the blue truck?"

"Past it, under the fridge? Yeah, think you might be right. That'd have been across from Gina's?"

A surprised chuff of laughter from the Turk. "Gina's. Yeah. Wow. That brings back, uh…"

"Nightmares?" Lana suggested. "Let's see how it all held up."

* * *

The false trapdoor was still open, the storeroom it hid decimated but for a few smashed jars and something furry that might once have been a preserve. It looked even greyer and uglier than Reno remembered it: an empty bar fridge, a camp stove and a sturdy wooden table that still bore the scar from a cleaver wedged in so tight in one corner that a fourteen-year-old Reno hadn't been able to budge it.

The knife had gone, and so had the shitty little TV set that had sat on a crate in front of the two dissolving armchairs. The mattress on the floor was still there, between two more crates, stained so badly that even the looters hadn't wanted anything to do with it, although obviously askew — as if anyone in Midgar kept cash in a mattress.

Lana was already crouched by the table, brushing her fingers over the rug to find the catch. Reno tossed her a long nail that had escaped the notice of looters, and she pressed the head into place. There was a click.

Yuffie grinned broadly as the entire table tipped backward, taking the rug with it, and revealing a steep set of stairs and a rope pull. "Cool," she said, and Reno tossed her a grin as he slipped into the stairwell.

Elena scooted in after him, and Lana pulled the trapdoor into place after them all. Yuffie blinked rapidly as strip lighting flickered to life. At the bottom of the stairs, they paced a short, grimy corridor and emerged into a much larger space. Dirty light washed across floor and low ceiling.

"Yeesh, you weren't kidding when you said it was a bunker." She stretched up and pressed a hand flat to the ceiling, came away with a glove made of dust. "Guh. Ross. Ness."

"Hey, you don't like it, there used to be a hotel down the street." Reno grumped, mako eyes glimmering eerily in the darkness. He did something with his hands; there was a click, and then a narrow beam of torchlight revealed how much dust they were inhaling. An identical light on Elena's weapon pierced the darkness to their right.

"Generator must be down," Lana murmured. "I'll go take a look, but you might want to get on to Highwind, see if he's got any non-Mako fuel."

"Non-Mako?" Yuffie asked, eyebrows raised.

Elena said, "It's harder to shut down a place like this if it isn't connected to the Shinra grid."

Lana shrugged. "Tone was a paranoid sumbitch."

She stalked off to the left, her own flashlight's broader beam hovering briefly over a couple of plain army cots. Elena's heels clicked away in the opposite direction.

"Might want to stick with me, Kisaragi; Fire materia's probably just gonna set off the waterworks." Reno gestured with his chin to the glint of a sprinkler on the ceiling. "Not sure what they're connected to, but I ain't listening to Laney bitch about wet sheets."

Yuffie kept a wary eye out for bugs as they moved past one cot after another. After half a dozen cots, she exclaimed happily over the sight of a real bed, albeit a narrow, squeaky-looking iron one with a faded blue comforter. "Maybe I won't hit up the hotel after all," she said as they trailed past more beds, each with brightly-coloured bedclothes and a different tired-looking frame.

"First dozen or so're for Button's 'projects'," Reno said, torchlight jiggling as he air-quoted. "Kids off the street that mostly didn't stay for more'n a night or two. The beds were for regulars."

"Regular rent boys?" Yuffie grinned, wiggling her eyebrows, and Reno rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, and the rest of us. That one was mine." He waggled the flashlight at a patched red quilt. "Guessing Meltzer's was pink, but that was someone else's when I was here, so maybe not."

"There's what, thirty?" Yuffie counted off in her head, and nodded to herself. "That's a lot of not-rent boys to keep. Whoever ran this place must have been seriously into do-gooding."

"One of 'em was," Reno agreed. "Grab the door?"

Yuffie did as she was asked, and made a face at the dank, uninviting smell of long-abandoned bathroom. "Uuuugh. Another glamorous day…"

"…as a Turk," Reno finished dryly. "We're clear enough. Call the rest."

* * *

[Day 15, 1835 Midgar Standard Time]

They were still poking into the corners by the time the rest of AVALANCHE arrived bearing two-stroke and canned ham, and Yuffie had discovered a bed with all the glittering gauze of a five-star fairy princess. She had promptly flung herself face-down in it and then spent ten minutes hacking up dust and possibly glitter while Reno laughed his ass off.

Lana and Cid had, by all accounts, spent twenty minutes cursing and sweating with the generator by torchlight before they came back up to scrounge for the lowest-level Lightning materia. A quick Bolt later and the entire bunker had rumbled to life, enormous ventilation fans doing their best to circulate stale air and dust.

Yuffie's bed looked even more magical with the lights setting off sparkles in the gauze, and she thought immediately of Marlene, stuck at home with Elmyra and spelling homework. She wondered if Barret could smuggle the sequinned butterfly pillow under his vest, and resolved to shove it down Cid's jacket instead. If Marlene had to go to school instead of facing unknown terrors, the least she deserved was souvenirs.

Tifa had found the kitchen within minutes of the lights coming up, and she, Rude, and Cloud were clattering merrily about within. Elena and Barret had been kicked out to save the crockery; they had resorted to scrubbing the mismatched tables and were probably using all the hot water before any of them had thought to have showers, Yuffie realised with some disappointment. It was hard to pout at the ceiling from a bed wreathed in yellow and orange tulle, so she rolled onto her stomach and eyed the rest of the bunker's inhabitants.

Aeris and Reeve were shaking down the bedclothes; Feather trailed them, holding pillows when asked. Sephiroth sat on a cot, apparently content to observe.

Red and Vincent had paced the entire hall before they had settled, Red on a cot right beneath a vent; Vincent, a few beds away on an uninspired tartan blanket. His hands worked automatically to break down each weapon, clean it, reassemble, while his eyes flitted almost idly between AVALANCHE members. They flickered toward her as she swung her feet in the air, and the faintest movement of an eyebrow said that he'd noticed her attention.

She was wearing a shirt; there was no need for the tingle in her stomach. She crossed her eyes and poked out her tongue, and when she focused again, he was looking at his hands as they worked.

Yuffie watched them for a few seconds, too, and then rolled from the bed to the floor and her feet. Her shoulder gave a warning twinge as she twisted. She mimed a drinking glass to Vincent as she passed; he shook his head minutely.

"Timin' down to a goddamn art," Barret said as she entered the kitchen; she bowed, fluttering her hands.

"Water any good?"

Tifa wrinkled her nose, head see-sawing as she heaved a tray of potatoes into the oven. "Use the canteens." She stood back to adjust a few more dials, and set another dish on the stovetop. "Yuffie, if you're not busy…"

* * *

An hour later, when Tifa was finished with her (and dinner was ready enough to be in danger from thieving ninja fingers), Yuffie was sitting at the trestle tables when Lana emerged, looking troubled.

"It can wait," she said when Yuffie asked, but Aeris and Reeve were as good as blood hounds where a secret was concerned. Aeris leaned in conspiratorially.

Reeve just sat back and waited for a report.

Lana grimaced. "I think… I might have an idea of where your friend comes from," she said, jerking her head in Feather's direction, and Reeve's eyes rounded with curiosity.

"That can't wait," he said. Lana stood, and they followed her like ducklings, past the way they'd come in to the bunker, into a small, shabby sitting room with a desk in one corner.

"This was where the operators lived, when they weren't pretending to live upstairs," Lana said. "They were married — or near enough for us, anyway — and the wife, Button, was some kind of dancer, way back when."

She crossed to the far side of the room, and nudged open the door to the bathroom. "Check out her memorabilia."

There were way too many lightbulbs around the mirror, and tiny figurines all on a shelf below it. The centerpiece was a woman of frosted glass on a mirrored lake traced with snowflakes. Beside it sat a framed, signed postcard with a similar design; this one showed dark hair and a single dark tear beneath the dancer's left eye.

"'Balamb's extraordinary Ice Dancer'," Reeve read slowly.

"There's newspaper clippings," Lana said. "Opposite the toilet."

There was no mistaking the face in the photographs, but it was like looking at Feather's twin. The flash of teeth, the spark of life in her eyes — dark eyes, Yuffie noted, not pale and ghostly like they were now.

Lana reached out and tapped on the corner of the clipping.

Together, they stared at the date.

"What… happened to her?" Aeris asked.

Reeve cracked his knuckles and swallowed, loud in the silence. "I think we can agree it was nothing good."


	20. Deeper

[Day 15, 2000 Midgar Standard Time]

Elena was only halfway through her meal when Aeris and Lana returned. With Reeve trailing behind them, jaw set, scratching at his stubble, it wasn't hard to know something was wrong. She patted the seat between herself and Reno, where Tifa had already laid out a plate, and he clambered into it wearily.

"That's a yes, then?" she prompted. "It's her?"

"Either that or she really resembles her grandmother." He let out a long, slow breath, puffing out his cheeks. "I don't..."

Elena's lips pulled to one side, brows twitching together. "...don't know? Don't want to tell her?"

"Both," Reeve admitted, scraping absently at his potato. "I'd call it impossible, but... well, that would make Vincent impossible, too. And our celebrated General. I just feel like... I should have better news."

Reno, who had listened patiently while he shovelled food between moving jaws, made an elaborate gesture while he swallowed. "No, see," he said when he had cleared his gullet, "It's great news. She was going to metaphorically live forever, and now she actually might."

"You're a goddamn poet, Reno," Elena said, while attempting to communicate with her eyebrows that he wasn't helping. "Keep your voice down."

"The brat's right next to her yakkin' her head off, she's not going to hear me." Reno set down his fork. "And if you want to be sure, I'm pretty sure we have kits down here."

"Kits?" Elena asked, now totally lost, and Reno nodded as he wiped his mouth.

"Tests. For mako poisoning."

"Cases all through the slums," Reeve elaborated. "Not enough maintenance, not enough trained crew. I—" He all but physically swallowed the phrase, _I told them_. "Let me know if you find any. I'll talk to Cloud, let him know what our... theories are."

* * *

"It's going to sting," Aeris explained. "Just a little pinch, though, okay? Then we're done."

Feather nodded, hesitant, and touched her finger to the pad. She flinched as the sharp pierced her skin and jerked the finger back to suck at its tip like a child. Aeris ruffled her hair as she stood.

"No lollipops, but I'll see if I can convince Tifa to make pie," she said, and moved to the desk in the corner to fiddle with the device.

In her absence, Reeve wrapped a bandaid cautiously around Feather's fingertip, and tapped his own fingers against his knee. "How are you feeling?"

"I don't know." Feather's tattooed lips compressed, brows drawing lightly together. "Should I feel something?"

Across the room, Sephiroth gave a soft exhalation that might have been laughter. Reeve struggled with irritation for a moment before amusement won out. "No idea," he confessed, and grinned at the faint spark in her eye.

Aeris, pacing absently as she watched the tiny screen, jumped as it began to emit a high-pitched beep. She scanned the numbers briefly, then reset the device and began replacing the needle.

"Feather's mako concentration is very high," she said. "Far more than a normal slum-dweller, maybe on-par with a SOLDIER." She offered the device to Sephiroth, who placed his thumb on the pad. This time, the beep was faster, and more shrill. He handed it back. "I tested Vincent earlier; his mako levels aren't much higher than Feather's."

"So chances are we're right, then," Reeve said. "This is who you were. Are," he corrected himself, but Feather shook her head, eyes pale but no less certain.

"Were," she said. "When I look at the photographs, they seem... familiar. But not right."

Reeve found that his fingers had stopped plucking nervously at the fabric of his slacks. "Still Feather, then?"

She smiled. "For now."

* * *

The mako in their blood made it easy to determine who slept and who did not. Nanaki's tail burned low, draped over the side of his cot, but even against its dim corona, Sephiroth's eyes were easy to pick out.

Vincent's were no less visible. Sephiroth did not move when he sat on an adjacent cot, but the glowing green flickered. "Valentine."

He had thought long and hard about these words, but that made them no easier to say. "Whatever happened to the girl..." Fortunately, Sephiroth's cool intellect had brought him to the same conclusion.

"It does bear a certain resemblance, doesn't it?" He shifted on the cot, sitting up on his elbows. "Our cases are linked, but hers is... anomalous. Unless, of course, it is not."

"Then it started here," Vincent said. "Long before..."

"Fifty years, give or take." Sephiroth inhaled and exhaled, slow and quiet. "This may pre-date even Gast."

They sat in silence for a time, the flicker of Nanaki's tail the only movement. Finally, Sephiroth dropped back onto the cot again.

"If data exists, it's here."

This was their only hunting ground, Vincent thought. His saliva was metallic, tinged with Galian's unease. "Cloud should know."

Sephiroth shrugged. "If you like. It doesn't make much difference."

No difference for Cloud, perhaps, Vincent conceded, but there was a chill in his mind. The distance of his memories, his knowledge of Midgar's history... had he not been here, a bare decade later? The memory was as thin as vapour.

Years of slumber had not dulled the sound of Lucrecia's screams.

He stalked back along the rows of beds. Tifa slept restlessly while Cloud was on watch, hair fraying from its nighttime braid. Across from her, Aeris seemed unnaturally still. Reeve hunched into his pillow; the Turks that slept did so with their weapons by their sides. Both of Yuffie's feet and one arm were visible, and several of her cushions had slipped to the floor (or, he suspected in one case, been flung).

He sat on the first bed beyond her, then lay down without pulling back the blankets. The hall was full of the muffled sounds of slumber.

Eventually, Vincent slept.

* * *

He kneels in the square, toes crossed, sweaty palms on rice paper, on his knees. His heartbeat is unsteady; he breathes, and then the drums begin.

First to his feet, then to his full height, narrow limbs spinning. The colours of a festival whirl about him, lanterns and stalls selling anything that will fry. The stars above streak through his vision, begin to colour as he and the drums both gather speed. Urgency. His fans flip and catch, plucking at the air as though he can draw back a curtain—

—open a door—

Something shifts in his chest, in his blood, in the back of his throat. His ear drums are screaming, and then he knows it isn't his ears.

When he opens his eyes, all he sees is fire, burning fans flitting away from hands that are no longer hands.

* * *

[Day 16, 0400 Midgar Standard Time]

"Whoa, monster man."

He woke with every muscle locked, lungs burning, fingers clawed into the pillow. It took him several moments to recognise Yuffie's voice, let alone her eyes, watching him gravely from a few feet away.

"Was the mattress blackmailing you, Vincent? Did it learn your dark secret?"

He stared at her. Slowly, he realised that his left arm was still taut, that the gauntlet was curled through foam and springs alike. He withdrew it carefully, but not without the jarring squeal of bronze against wire.

Yuffie unwrapped her arms from around her knees and came to her feet while she waited for him. "Bad night?" He did not dignify her with a response. "Yeah, me neither."

He looked at her, then, and looked hard. Her lips were thin even without a smile to stretch them, and the shadows beneath her eyes were getting worse. The grin she cracked might have fooled a passer-by, but...

"When do we leave?"

"First light's still an hour away. We're closer than Tifa thought we'd be."

"You should sleep."

"Says you." She sighed, rolling her shoulders uncomfortably. "I'll sleep better once this is over."

He stood slowly, deliberately tensing and relaxing each muscle as he straightened. He doubted this place had jasmine tea, but they could look. Yuffie had never been shy about raiding a kitchen.

"Until then..." He tilted his head slightly in the direction of the canteen area, and this time Yuffie's smile was a little more genuine.

"Race you to the kettle, monster man."

* * *

First light turned out to be little more than brighter patches of grey across the storm-choked sky. No rain, though, and as yet no visible lightning, for which Elena (wending her way across heaps of scrap) was profoundly grateful.

Red bounded along the crest of scrap mountain to her right, pausing occasionally, ears near-invisible in the shag of his mane. He at least seemed energised by the dawn. The rest of the party was trying, but in this weather she suspected even Yuffie would rather just go back to bed.

There wasn't much left of the Shinra tower, a half-dozen floors that hadn't been sheared off by Weapon or the Crisis from the Skies, and had mostly collapsed in on itself since. There were gaping holes in the structure, and where there weren't outright holes, fissures the width of her forearm had opened in the cladding. She'd seen it before, though she tried to avoid such missions, but every time she did it was like a hit to the solar plexus.

She lengthened her stride.

Reeve had explained the movements Shinra had already made; the sweeps through the structure, the salvage missions. He didn't think there was anything above ground. But he had heard rumours, had encountered enough strange zoning restrictions when he was putting Midgar together, that there might be something underneath. Even though they'd sent teams through the wreckage, Ayuki's efforts made it clear that even in Neo-Shinra there were plenty of strays and dissidents to be found, people who believed Shinra didn't deserve second chances... among other things. It was possible that a salvage party might miss something — or might find it, and decide it was safer buried.

Elena paused at a whistle from Lana up ahead, who cupped her hands to call back to them. Elena glanced toward Vincent, red cloak streaming as he began a swift descent, and began to slither back toward the ground. Red was similarly cautious, picking his way down the side of the scrap heap, at least until he could nod politely to her.

"Lana thinks she's found an entrance," he informed her, then took two bounding leaps further down to catch up to Tifa and Cloud.

Elena eyed the slope below her, and was glad of her gloves and a recent tetanus booster.

Most of the group was already inside by the time she caught up; Highwind was propped between the wall and the Venus Gospel, trying not to cough while he got his breath back. She joined him for a few moments, checking her gloves for punctures, before she slipped a pen light out of her jacket pocket.

"After you," Highwind muttered, hefting the spear. She went first, flashlight in her left hand, Glock held low against her right thigh. Safety on, for now.

Grey slum dirt faded to filthy linoleum that might have had a gloss finish once upon a time, a few standard-issue waiting room chairs scattered around a mouldering reception area. Beyond it, Elena could see other people's flashlights travelling over crumbling concrete slabs, long-disconnected wires, dusty silver ducting from destroyed air conditioning systems. The ceiling slanted and outright failed in places, some light filtering in from the jagged holes up above, where windows had once been.

The flicker of fire at the corner of her eye made her flinch until she caught the opalescent glint of Red's pupil. He padded nearer, muzzle raised, nostrils flaring. Dust swirled in the torchlight, and sizzled in his tail flame.

"Smell anything useful?" Cid asked, and Red shook his head as if to clear it. A few more huffs of breath and his ears flattened.

"Smoke," he said. "And... hmmph. Lizards. Snakes."

Elena tightened her grip, trying not to recall the stories her uncles and cousins always told her on the plate about Zoloms coming up through the sewers. "Weird place for snakes," she said. "It's cold down here." Or maybe that was just the touch of ice against her spine at the mention of the damn things.

"Exactly." Red huffed a few more times, then padded away, pushing through thickets of wiring with head and shoulders.

Cid chuckled. "Just stomp yer feet," he advised. "They're not interested in folks your size."

"Excuse me?" she shrilled, only half joking, when a heavy _CLANG_ sounded from the direction Red had vanished in. "Red?"

"There is an elevator shaft." His low voice rumbled around them. "Be careful. The fall may not kill you, but it would likely break bones."

"On our way," Tifa called, and Elena followed the path she knew he had taken, unable to discern exactly where his voice was coming from in the broken space. Cid moved alongside her, tapping the ground in front of him suspiciously with Venus Gospel.

"The cage is between floors," Red commented in the darkness. "I can see a corridor. It goes on for some way."

Elena caught sight of the edge of the hole as his tail lashed back and forth, lighting different parts of the lift shaft's surface and making the dangling cables seem to stretch. She peered down the shaft to where Red was crouched on the roof of a frankly horrifying elevator cage, head poking into the space he had found, haunches swaying with his tail's interest and agitation.

"Watch out for grue," she called, and he pulled back far enough to cock an ear in her direction, as if he thought he'd misheard.

She shone the torch upward, trying to make out whether the cables were sturdy or not. A solid tug on the cable brought a tiny avalanche of dust and debris clattering and echoing down the shaft. Elena grimaced as she heard Red grumble and sneeze.

"Sorry. It looks pretty solid, though. We should be able to use it if we climb down one at a time."

"Climb down?" Tifa's voice sounded dubious as she approached and made much the same inspection Elena had. "Where do you think it goes to?"

Red sat back on his haunches and tilted his head so he could eye her. "It seems to lead toward the central column. I think there are other entrances, too. I feel a breeze on my whiskers."

"Can we get through?" Yuffie asked, peering over the edge. "Oh! I see it. Heaps of room."

"...it may be a tight fit for Barret," Red pointed out, but the big man snorted.

"You worry about your own self. If I can't get through, I'll jes have to make that hole bigger."

* * *

As it turned out, some twisting and cursing was all that was required, though Yuffie offered to get a tug-o-war line going. Sound echoed strangely in the corridor, ricocheting off concrete and steel, and she liked it about as much as she liked dentists sans balloons. At least the walls were reflective, so the little light they had with them went a long way, and was diffuse enough that they probably weren't completely dark-blind. All the same, she kept her eyes slitted to prevent them from becoming too accustomed to the torchlight.

The corridor ran straight and doorless for about thirty feet. Then Cloud paused, the beam of his flashlight passing over a forlorn-looking boomgate and a half-hearted attempt at a caged elevator shaft. No cables. Yuffie glanced up first, then gulped as Cloud's torch illuminated the wreckage at the bottom of the shaft.

"Soooo we're taking the stairs, then."

"Ramp," Tifa corrected her, gesturing with her torch, and Yuffie's eyes followed two dusty lengths of guard rail around a space easily as large as one of the Pagoda's floors.

About the size of the ramp surrounding the pod room under the manor.

Tifa had noticed it, too; Yuffie could tell by the set of her jaw. "Cloud?"

"Looks like it's more or less intact." Cloud leaned out into the darkness to eye the levels below and above them. "Vincent, Barret, Lana — with me. The rest of you, head upstairs. See what you can find."

"Filing and computers, too," Elena reminded them. "If there's anything about the Imbued down here, we want it. That might mean extracting the hard disks, since I doubt there's still working power down here."

"Right, slight change, then — Cid, you're with us; Barret, stick with Tifa."

Yuffie was already moving, eyes flickering through the darkness, seeking out movement. She sensed rather than felt Nanaki's presence on her right, and reached out to curl her fingers in his mane.

"We'll find something, Yuffie," he said.

She hoped so. They had no other leads.


	21. Elevator Action

[Day 16, 0930 Midgar Standard Time]

Tifa flexed her fingers as they climbed, stretching already-supple leather out of habit more than necessity. Nanaki padded just ahead of her, head low, tail-flame searing the dust on the floor. She could hear the gentle whirr of Barret's gun arm warming behind her. Too many close calls every time they closed in on a lead; if they were walking toward a fight, they would be prepared for it this time.

It was hard to imagine that they'd find anything new. For all the prickling paranoia across her shoulders, the structure seemed just as desolate as the ruins of Midgar above, just as eerily silent, except for the faint report of their footsteps.

They passed the elevator cage twice on their ascent before the ramp levelled out in front of a flimsy folding door and another short, broad corridor. A guard's office and a set of steel sliding doors made her pause.

"Shi-it," Barret said. "How we gonna get past that?"

Yuffie sidled up to the guard's office and pressed her face against the filthy window. Before Tifa could open her mouth to protest, the girl had an arm through the gap in the plexiglass and was groping around under the counter. When that yielded no results, she pressed her palms flat against the frame and whispered two words in quick succession.

Bullet-proof it might have been, but a well-applied Ice spell followed by a Quake was enough to shake it loose. Yuffie pulled herself up and through the window with ease, and twisted the knob of the perfectly ordinary door on the far side, Oritsuru held at the ready.

They waited. Tifa bit her tongue and reminded herself to breathe, feet shoulder-width apart, arms loose and ready at her sides. She resisted the urge to perform further warming exercises; there was no need to worry the rest of them.

"Incoming," Nanaki said, and crouched.

With a hiss and a low-grade whine, the steel doors cracked, and then parted. Yuffie stood behind them, sucking on singed fingers. She grinned. "I listen sometimes. No one tell Cid."

* * *

The dust clung to his pads and muffled the footfalls of the rest of his companions. Nanaki paused for a moment by Yuffie's side, rubbing his shoulder against her thigh and dashing dust from a paw before he moved past her into the gloom.

Large desks dominated the immediate area, complete with computer terminals and related paraphernalia that were as dust-coated as the floors. Ancient office chairs in shades that must once have been eye-watering sat abandoned, the foam cushions disintegrating in near-organic clumps. Cracked and rotting blackboard easels stood at intervals, chalk marks half-obscured by flakes from the plasterboard ceiling.

Beyond the desks, a staircase led down to long countertops that might once have been stainless steel, sinks, the dim outlines of large jars. Old specimens, Nanaki thought, tail twitching as he stalked along the guard rail. Some of the jars were damaged; the rank chemical scent was powerful, even on the landing.

To the left, the upper floor was dominated by rows of archive shelving, better-constructed than the shelves in Nibelheim had been. Nanaki supposed that within the Shinra building, even a scientist as absent-minded as Gast would have been held to some standard of tidiness. The beam of Tifa's torch played over the shelving for a moment, and she started toward them immediately.

"Red, help me figure out how these are organised? Elena, do you want to give the computers a shot?"

The Turk gave the dust-coated terminals a dubious look. "Honestly, we'd do better to carry them out and clean them up first. I doubt I even have anything that'll read them, might need Highwind to make a trip to Edge." She grimaced as she wiped down a case and spotted the model number. "…or Mideel."

"Think my grammaw had one of these," Barret muttered from behind her, and Elena nodded in absent agreement as she started to prise off the cover.

Despite the stronger shelving, the documents themselves were nearly as badly damaged as those in Nibelheim had been; there were too many broken pipes (or broken specimen jars, Nanaki thought) and too much humidity in the air to let them survive for long. Tifa's gloved fingertips came away coated in a paste of dust and mildew, and his nose did not fare better.

"Looks like the ones back here aren't as damp," Yuffie called from the far end of the room, and Tifa followed Nanaki to her.

"Start at this end," Tifa said, presumably to him, and moved to the far end of the bookcase to begin pulling books and boxes from the shelves for her perusal.

He stood on his hind legs to read the spines of the binders - large, heavy things labelled according to specimen number, as near as he could tell. He snorted when he spotted something misfiled, and nosed at it. "Take this one down, please. Notes on Baal do not belong in the specimen logs."

"Baal?" Yuffie rolled the word around in her mouth as she stretched to grasp the folder. She opened it as she knelt to place it before him, and he snorted and flipped it closed again. "Hey! I thought you wanted it."

"Just out of the way," Nanaki said, muzzle crinkling. "Baal, or Bela'al, was an underwater volcano... or perhaps just a fault line. Indications of its worship as a sea and storm god have appeared in several island locations — small shrines, usually on promontories — but no true temple has ever been found. Some scholars believe the island on which Baal originated vanished centuries ago. Possibly devoured by the Baal fault line itself."

"Hmph." Yuffie moved it out of his way and crossed her arms. "He probably just realised that against Leviathan, he didn't stand a chance."

"Baal had multiple aspects, Yuffie, not all of them male," he said, tilting his head to focus. "These are all specimen logs. Why don't you check the lower floor for any interesting specimens? They should be labelled with numbers like these." He rested a paw on the spine of a binder. "Tifa and I will read until you find something."

Yuffie rolled her eyes and trotted down the stairs. Nanaki heard a tinkling sound, and Yuffie's soft _ulp_ of disgust. "You owe me new shoes, Red," she said. "And maybe some bleach for my brain."

He curled his tail around his forefeet and crouched to read the spines of the binders at Tifa's feet. Neither noticed when, several minutes later, Yuffie broke into an interested trot.

* * *

"You got pockets, Valentine?" Meltzer held out a Summon materia, neatly split in two, with crystal fragments of the specimen's fingertips still clinging to its surface. Her jaw clenched tight as soon as she finished speaking, and he took the materia from her quickly to save her from asking again. His own stomach was less tender. He tucked the materia halves into his hip pocket, and moved on to the next pod without a word.

There were nearly two dozen pods in the chamber, but only three quarters of them were closed, dimly lit by the mako within. Over-preparation, he wondered, or merely the endless optimism of Gast? Or a predecessor? Impossible to tell. It was plain that they had not found as many Summons — or as many suitable specimens, perhaps — as they had hoped. He remembered a number of discoveries, verified and staged, from his distant childhood, but couldn't recall when the numbers of known Summon materia had gone from a handful to a dozen.

He would ask. When Cloud asked Yuffie to identify these split materia with children's fingers fused closed around them.

Perhaps his stomach was more tender than he thought. He shifted his feet, and frowned. Shifted again, and raised his claw to still Meltzer's fumbling in the pod, good hand on the butt of his rifle.

"Cloud."

Cid and Cloud both turned to watch him, falling silent as he listened. Chaos shifted, and a faint creaking sound slid down his vertebrae like ice.

"There."

"I heard." Cloud was already moving, sword at the ready. Together they closed in on the darkened pods at the end of the row, and together stopped short when they saw what awaited them.

This crystallised figure was not inside the pod; it was resting against the pod's wall, head tilted back as if in repose. One leg was bent, one hand cupped against its belly. The other rested lightly, touching the floor only with the thin points of its fingertips. Faint lines showed around the fingertips, and as they watched, the hand moved gradually forth, and then back. The claw tips rasped against steel.

"Breathing," Meltzer whispered, sounding sick. "He's still breathing."

 _He_ , Vincent thought, and realised too late that he recognised the face, the beard, the brow. Cid swore softly behind him. "Is that…?"

"Staniv," Vincent confirmed. He crouched, touched the crystallised shoulder. Cool and hard, but warmth still filtered through it. "Staniv. _Lyh oui rayn? Lyh oui suja yd ymm?_ "

A slightly sharper respiration, punctuated by sharp cracks in the crystal that coated him. Cloud crouched at Vincent's side. "Is there anything we can do?"

"Lyh fa syga oui…" Make him what? Vincent wondered. Less likely to die? "…suna lusvundypma?"

Nothing. Staniv breathed, slower than Vincent would have thought possible for a living human, and for long moments, they watched.

Then, all at once, the crystal creaked. Tiny shards shot from Staniv's clawed hand, propelled by the force it had taken to move the overgrown fingers. Staniv clenched his left fist, or tried to, and the crystal shrieked and popped as the flesh it encased tried to break through. Then the whole arm lurched, sending hairline fractures out along the crystal along the arm's length.

Almost immediately, blood welled, and began to seep through the fractures. It spattered the floor beneath Staniv's outstretched hand, but the clawed fingers moved. Slowly and with great difficulty, but they moved.

Carefully, Staniv touched the point of his clawed finger to the steel, and etched a rough vertical line. Then a second horizontal line, beside it. A third—

"Yuffie," Vincent said, and Staniv stopped writing. "She's here; she's— _cra caynlrac vun oui, yht vun_ Godo."

Staniv shifted. Glacial, limbs creaking, he carved one character at a time. Vincent read, memory straining.

"Godo… _nejan_ … no, Water God. Hold — _rumtehk_? _Tadyehehk_?" Staniv kept writing, without the tap that signified a correct guess, and Vincent cursed the lapse in his skills. " _Raen. Raenmuus._ No— _E ys cunno. E femm nasaspan, yht fneda ed uid vun ran._ "

Staniv tapped once, and left a drop of blood in the wake of his claw tip. The final character was half etching, half smear, and Vincent recognised it at once, though he did not know if he could translate, or articulate its connotations for Cloud.

"Cloud," he said, reaching back as if to grab their attention, as if they were not all spellbound with horror at the Wutaian's fate. "Watch, and remember."

The hand that had lain cupped against Staniv's stomach cracked, twisted, until they could see that it cupped a dull red materia, flawed and chipped, but not quite parted into hemispheres. Staniv's jaw lurched open with a sharp pop, and glittering shards rained down on his collar bone. As the hand he had written with rose slowly to hover over the other palm, air hissed from his mouth in short, staccato bursts.

"Is he… trying to summon?" Meltzer murmured, mystified. But as the demons woke, one by one, and fixed his gaze on Staniv's blank crystal eyes, Vincent felt his marrow freeze in understanding.

"Not summoning."

Red light seeped between — through — the crystal fingers. Almost as he watched, the colour leached from the crystal encasing Staniv; the blood that had leaked into the cracks along his forearms dulled and turned to black. Careful not to disturb the preserved corpse, Vincent worked the materia out from between Staniv's hands.

It glinted restfully in the gloved palm of his hand, luminous, flawless, and whole.

* * *

There were specimens down here, sure, but her eyes wanted to skate right over most of them, and her stomach was inclined to agree. Especially since her sneaker treads where still squidgy with whatever she'd stood in by the stairs. She really didn't want to know.

She _did_ want to know why this lab had safes, though. Old-fashioned safes, with tumblers, like the poor suckers who'd worked here had never even heard of keycards. They weren't very _big_ safes, but Yuffie wasn't one to turn down an opportunity, even if they probably just had chemicals or the good scalpels in them.

She righted one of the disintegrating stools, and decided to crouch instead, then closed her eyes to focus on her fingers, her ears. Up above, she could hear Barret's heavy tread, the scratch of Red's claws on the archive shelving. Tifa, flipping pages, faster and faster as her frustration grew.

She tuned it out; rested her forehead against the cool, slightly grimy metal, and listened as her fingers worked the dial.

There was nothing in the first safe but a few scraps of paper and what might once have been an elastic band; whoever it had belonged to had cleared out and taken everything with them. She moved to the next workbench, which had a wooden stool that was the perfect height for a ninja to sit on while she broke into an ancient Shinra safe.

Feeling a little like Goldilocks and the Three Chocobos, she rested her head against the second safe and set to work, edging it slowly, smoothly clockwise.

_Click._

She eyed the dial. Thirty-six. Continue clockwise? Or anti-clockwise? She went with clockwise, and after a few slow circles without any luck, set the dial back to zero, then to thirty-six again.

This time, she'd hardly turned it before the second hollow _click_. Ten. Back clockwise.

Long, slow breaths. Tiny, subtle movements.

_Click._

Fifty-nine. Memory stirred, and before she thought it through completely, she turned clockwise in one swift movement, and stopped on ninety-seven.

 _Click._ But no satisfying _thunk_ , like the last safe had given when it opened, and the handle didn't budge when she tried it. Did this one have a longer combination? Or…

Turning it back to zero, she turned the dial again, faster this time.

_THUNK._

Her mouth went dry. She twisted the safe's handle with one finger firmly on her Haste materia, and tried not to sound too audibly relieved when no monsters fell out to bite her thieving fingers.

Instead of fiends, this safe held… paperwork. Requisition forms, budget reports, all with a big red CLASSIFIED at the top, and none of them particularly interesting to her.

At least until she spotted the _other_ thing in the safe.

The case was only small, maybe three inches deep, and only half that high. The base and vertices were brass or something like it, the glass panes set in them mostly free of dust thanks to the airtight environment of the safe. Someone had gotten a little over-enthusiastic about being in possession of a label gun, and a black strip was plastered across the front, white letters embossed across its surface.

DA CHA O

And below that, on red tape:

REF. 00917266 SHI

Inside the case were two neatly-sheared materia halves, so dull that they barely had a colour.

Before she realised she'd removed the lid, she was plucking the dead materia free, brushing her skin against it and calling for its essence with her own, trying to wake its magic with hers. But there was nothing. Not-quite-there impressions of many faces… many voices… even less than the smell of salt and scales in her Leviathan.

And it was cold. It was freezing.

"N'naki," she said, and was surprised to find her eyes stinging, voice cracked and dry, as if reaching for the dead materia had taken longer than she'd thought. "I've got. I think I've got something."

"What is it? Does it have a number?" The glow of his tail flame made looking at him almost painful as he blazed suddenly with interest.

"It's materia," she said, getting to her feet, fingers already slipping into her materia pouch. "It says it's Da Chao, I mean, Da Cha O, and it's split, like Leviathan." Words, spilling out of her. Red had asked something. "It's got a number. 'Ref. Zero zero nine…'"

The hair on her neck rose, and an instant later, Nanaki's hackles did the same. "Yuffie! Get back!" An explosive snarl, barely even words.

She was already moving.

Glass shattered, sending up waves of chemical fumes that dizzied her, stung her throat and nose; she backed hastily, one arm raised to protect her face, trying not to breathe too deeply. The man in a brown robe collected himself, flicked his fingers. Liquid preservatives that had gushed from broken specimen jars rippled aside, as if driven by the prow of an invisible boat.

"Git down!" Barret's gun arm clunked and whirred as he raised it, and Tifa flung herself at him, hauled it down again.

"No! Barret, you'll ignite the whole floor—"

Brown robe straightened, drew his right hand back past his shoulder, his left, forward to hip level, fingers soft, almost pliable. The air around him shifted, condensed, and then—

Yuffie watched the shade of Leviathan twine about the man in the brown robe — the Imbued, _Leviathan_ -Imbued — and felt her panic subside in the wake of a rage so deep, so cold, that for a moment, she felt nothing at all.

* * *

Chaos burned in Vincent's fingertips as he handed the fused materia off to Cloud, clouding his vision momentarily. Vincent closed his eyes for a moment, hoping to dispel the effects of the demon's wakefulness, but nothing had changed when he opened them again. Cloud's brow puckered with his frown as he turned the materia in his hands.

"I can't get a fix on it," he said. "Whatever Staniv did, it's like it put the Summon too deep. We'll give it to Yuffie or Aeris when we get topside."

"Yuffie," Vincent said, and Cid made an assenting grumble. Staniv was her father's retainer, as dear to her as an uncle; the materia would go to her.

Meltzer cleared her throat, asked the hard question. "What do we do with the body?"

Together, they stared at Staniv, as if he might want to comment on the matter.

"We don't have the equipment to haul him up today," Cid said at last. "Maybe we can get some winches from Sierra, come back for him." He stopped, scratching at his chin, and muttered, "Reckon he'll keep."

"Reckon he will," Cloud agreed, though he didn't sound happy about it.

Their conversation continued, but Vincent couldn't latch on to the words; whatever the demon focused on, it was pulling his own attention with it. Their eyes drew upward, until finally he found himself staring at the ceiling with Cid's hand rough on his shoulder.

"You all right, Vince?"

The words were language again. "I think… there may be some kind of problem."

"Congratulations," said a voice, young, male. "You think right."

* * *

He was fast; he was so fast, but she was faster, faster, faster, feet on the counter top and push away, spin and strike and knees tucked to chest—

Water whipped around her, each tendril striking with a waterfall's power, but never where he intended; still, she wished she'd brought the Water Bangle instead of swapping it for a Bolt Ring. With so many chemicals around, electricity could very easily give rise to fire — useless! Oritsuru soared left; she feinted right, then launched herself as soon as the Imbued's head tilted to trace the shuriken's flight. Her kick landed, solid, but her opponent seemed to melt sideways, spinning her off-balance and putting her on the wrong side of the room for Oritsuru's landing point.

Manipulate was second nature, even at this distance; she _pulled_ —

—the Leviathan-Imbued's hands spread wide, head cocked back, mouth pulling to the right in a smile she almost—

—Oritsuru back in her hand, trailing blood and cloth behind—

—and her father's face, with the hint of a smile.

* * *

Neither Vincent nor Meltzer hesitated; the man too closely resembled the fire-wielding Imbued who had attacked Elena in Nibelheim for comfort, though the eyes were a surprise. Blue-green crystal, blank and cold, had covered the whites completely, tiny chips edging over each lid, sending tiny stalactites running down each cheek.

It didn't make him one whit less dangerous.

The fireball he sent in their direction would surely have melted flesh had it connected. Vincent rolled, began firing, but the intense heat distorting the air around the man discharged the shells before they had a chance to connect.

Chaos was struggling, fighting to get free, but in a space this confined — he could not allow it. Cloud was waving, urging them toward the door; they were not the Imbued's target. He felt Meltzer's grip hauling him to his feet, saw her flinch, and knew that his control was slipping.

So be it.

 _Get out_ , he tried, but the words blew away from him, emerging only in a guttural roar.

They reached the Imbued long before Cloud and the others; they gripped him through the fire, heedless of the pain, and dashed him against the molten wreckage he had made of the mako pods. And again, as their would-be family fled past them both. And again, until they were satisfied he was still.

* * *

Tifa saw the face as it fell, started moving before the words had even found their way out of her mouth, hand on the handrail, eyes on the girl.

"Yuffie, look at me. Look at me, Yuffie, up here, don't look, don't—"

Oritsuru clattered against hard linoleum as the ninja's fingers uncurled, her entire body sagging like wet paper. Barret reached her first, snarl lines on either side of his nose as he recognised the corpse, aim shifting from the body to the cloud above it.

Mist coiled in the air, dragged at her skin like scales rubbed backward. She edged along the wall, trying not to breathe it in, trying not to see the Water God's shape filling out, getting stronger.

"Yuffie. Yuffie, sweetheart, can you hear me?" Blank eyes, grey as mist; no response to Tifa's leathers on her pale cheeks.

"Teef, we gotta move."

She moved her hands to Yuffie's shoulders, squeezed. "Yuffie, look at me. Are you hurt?" She found Yuffie's hand, put her fingertips in the palm. "Can you squeeze my hand?"

"Get her up." Elena, shrill and echoing through the chamber. Barret shifted and swore softly behind her and Tifa felt her jaw clench.

"Give her a _minute_ , all right—"

"Honey, we don't have no minute," Barret said, and there was cold water on her knee, through the worn toe of her boot.

Leviathan's bulk shifted, scales rasping against the rotting wood. Water poured down his sides, seeping from the dorsal fin, cascading from open jaws with a thousand thousand slender silver teeth and the pounding roar of waves against rocks.

Barret heaved Yuffie up and over his broad shoulders and backed hastily for the stairs. Tifa groped frantically for Oritsuru in the salty cold, water seeping into her gloves, swelling the leather, dulling her touch. Her hand fell on a wing and she twisted. Elena covered her from the top of the staircase; Tifa sloshed and waded and hauled herself up by the handrail, boots sodden, leggings soaked to the thigh.

She paused by Elena, raking hair back from her face. The water strained and twisted away from the staircase, gathering beneath Leviathan, undertow so strong It sucked the jars from the workbenches, back toward the water god. Leviathan tipped back its head to roar to an invisible sky, and surged.

"Go," Elena whispered, screamed; Tifa couldn't tell.

* * *

Cid wheezed to a halt by the elevator cage, coughing and choking and cursing every cig he'd ever smoked. If he pressed any harder on the stitch under his ribs, his hand'd go straight through. Meltzer pounded past after Cloud, braids smacking against her shoulder guard. He took a deep breath to follow, but Nanaki's roar of warning stopped him dead.

The cat was at full-pelt, chips of paint and polish scattering in his wake. "Back aboveground!" Blasts of sound, unmodulated. Cid straightened up, eyes narrowing. "Leviathan — flooding the upper floors!"

Hell in a handbag. He was shambling into a run before he'd properly processed what a large volume of water would do to the paper-and-wire innards of the Shinra building. Nanaki loped behind, beside, ahead of him, lean body coiling and extending, barely pausing as he leapt to the upper edge of the elevator, hauled himself through the gap, and vanished from sight, taking his tail flame with him.

Cid's progress was a little less graceful. He vaulted up easy enough, but pulled up short to avoid braining himself and had to scoot and scramble the rest of the way forward. Meltzer wasn't much better; he gave her a hand up.

"Hurry!" Nanaki barked from above, too anxious even to pace. Cid crouched to watch the corridor, gave a shrug to Meltzer.

"After you."

Cloud rounded the corner, fumbling at his wrist. Cid's eyes narrowed, and he ran his fingers over his own materia; nothing very likely to slow down a water god, let alone halt a rampage.

"What's the plan, Spike?"

"Ice?" Cloud demanded tersely, and swore when Cid shook his head. "Meltzer, Ice materia?"

Meltzer, dangling several meters above Cid's head, gave a huff that was one third exasperation, two thirds effort. "Little busy, Strife."

"Do you have it or not?"

"Kid, Ice ain't gonna be much use against—"

"Sooner or later, Vincent is coming up that ramp," Cloud ground out. "He might not be human when he does. Do the math in your head and _tell me you have an Ice materia._ "

Cid did the math.

The bottom fell out of his stomach.

Behind Cloud, Elena and Tifa rounded the corner just ahead of an ankle-deep wash of water and foam. The body of it plunged onward down the ramp, but enough spun off after the girls to form a strong swell, momentum carrying it halfway up the far wall before it started to spread down the hall after them.

Cloud gestured, urging them on. Tifa was soaked to the thigh, wet hair bunching oddly at her back; the Turk moved quickly and carefully, like she didn't trust her shoes on a wet floor.

Barret came into view, the kid slung over one shoulder, his good arm out for balance. (What the hell had happened? Who did Cid have to give some lumps?) Barret turned. He leaned against the weight of the water. Too far.

He went down under four feet of water, and disappeared from view.

* * *

They ran from the flames that wouldn't go out, shoulders hunched, hands clutched to their chest. No amount of pressure stilled their searing. They stumbled, lurched, one shoulder to the wall.

Chill water relieved the overheated flesh of feet and calves, but as they went, it rose, stinging and clawing its way along cuts and jagged seams. They fell. Their hands plunged into the water, and the pain was so great that they roared and lurched upright as the water sparked and steamed. They staggered a few more steps, and then the girl's body wrapped around their knees.

They lifted her, rumbling a warning to the burning water, and cradled her awkwardly against them. She did not cough; she did not move. They could not hear her.

Inside them, something cracked.

* * *

Tifa was halfway back to the ramp screaming for Barret when Cloud grabbed her arm, wrestled her to a halt. "Get up top," he said, shouting to be heard over the water. Her fist clenched in his shirt.

"If you think for _one minute_ —"

"Do you have an Ice materia?"

"What? No, Barret had—"

The howl froze her marrow, turned Cloud's face pale as ash.

"Out of the water. _Now._ "

He all but threw her back toward the elevator, keeping hold of her arm and pushing her ahead of him. He boosted her through the gap onto the stuck elevator, and as she turned to help him through, she saw Barret fight his way back up the ramp and into the corridor, wild-eyed and dripping.

Cloud saw the relief on her face, turned, shouted, "Barret! Ice wall, behind you! _Now!_ "

Tifa hauled Cloud up beside her, and froze at another roar, a series of crashes and clangs. At the far end of the corridor, sparks leapt across the lattice of the service elevator shaft. Her stomach dropped into her boots as she understood.

"Go," she said. "Find something to pull us up." To his credit, Cloud didn't argue. " _Barret, all the way—_ "

He was running, stumbling through the water, but he paused long enough focus a blast of ice behind him. Swirls and eddies froze in place; a wall of spiked crystals formed above them.

Beyond, Death Gigas grabbed scrunched handfuls of the wire cage as if it were netting.

"Get ready," she called to Cloud, hoping, praying, and she hauled with all her might to get Barret onto the elevator beside her. "Another wall—"

"Ice, ice, ice," Barret hissed, already freezing over the way that he had come, his breath coming in clouds. "Spike, get us the fuck out of—"

" _Shoot the cable,_ " Tifa half-shrieked, grabbing hold, and they kicked off just as Death Gigas smashed an arm through the ice, and then through the rest of the wall. They clawed and kicked their way up higher as Cloud, Cid, and Elena dragged them, foot by foot, but it wasn't going to be enough, couldn't be enough.

Blue sparks wreathed the Gigas' arm as he brought it down on the elevator, crumpling it inward like an aluminium can. Once, twice, and Tifa shrieked as loud as the elevator as its brakes gave in.

A moment of weightlessness; Nanaki's shoulder knocked all the air from her diaphragm and she couldn't breathe to curse when something pierced her arm, her collarbone, with bruising impact.

A thud, a crunch, and the Gigas stood over them, crackling, buzzing in a strange, ululating keen over the still, pale figure folded in its arms.

* * *

In the darkness beneath Midgar, water laps at ash: all that remains of the Phoenix-Imbued's corpse.

Every so often, the flames re-ignite, the water steams and bubbles, and an infant with materia-encrusted eyes kicks, strangles, drowns. The water is everywhere, and the current is strong.

Eventually, there is not enough ash to revive him.

Everything goes back to the ocean.


	22. And Underneath Your Ribs

[Day 16, 1330 Midgar Standard Time]

"—cent? Vincent?"

He flinched, coming back to himself; wet, cold, stricken. His throat was dry; the Gigas—no. Yuffie. His arms tightened reflexively around her, and he could feel Tifa's hands on his face, burning against his chilled flesh.

"Vincent, I need you to let her go. Can you understand me?"

She could not possibly have survived; the water, the voltage—

"I'll carry her." It barely sounded like language. Tifa's brows drew upward, sorrowful, fond. Her eyes were full of tears.

"You got her out of there."

_You've done enough._ His throat — eyes, chest — burned. Breathing was impossible. Irrelevant.

Tifa knelt beside him to gather Yuffie's body into her arms. She made a sound, and then her fingers were digging into the wrist that was still flesh, forcing him to look, to see the pale hands, callused and reddened around a thick gold band.

Vincent stared at the Bolt Ring, something rising in his throat, threatening to explode from his lungs.

Tifa had one hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks as she clutched his hand, flung an arm around his shoulders, unable to contain herself any longer.

"She's okay," she said, thickly. "She's going to be fine. We need to get her back, but—"

"I'll carry her," Vincent said again. Perhaps by the time they returned to the bunker, he would be able to let her go.

* * *

"You don't understand," Aeris sighed, her tone beginning to colour with exasperation. "She isn't wounded. Not exactly."

"The hell's wrong with her, then?" Barret thumped an arm down on the dresser by the bed, making everything on it jump and rattle. At the foot of the bed, Nanaki growled, and Aeris laid a quelling hand across his shoulders.

"Her magic's being drained. It's like she's overdrawn herself, but nothing I do is helping bring it back. I know we're not in the best position, here, but she needs _rest_. I can't speed that along."

"Better hope she's good at resting underwater, then," Elena said. "We don't have the supplies for this, and the best we can do for the flooding is ice the doors. There's a reason they called this the _lower_ city."

"We have two days until we're cut off, on foot." Reeve had no doubts when it came to Midgar. "Three until this area's submerged."

"It's only water," Barret argued, and Reeve laughed at him, a single hollow bark.

"I did a study once. You do not want what you can catch from floodwater. Not in this city." His hand left straggling furrows through his hair. "We can't stay that long."

* * *

Seven hours.

Vincent moved through the darkness and the indistinct sounds of sleep, taking slow, even steps to match the soft breathing of a slumbering AVALANCHE, the persistent drum of rain. Behind him, Cid's damp rasp. Away to his left, the resonant drilling of Barret, muffled not-at-all by his pillow.

Ahead, Yuffie, a twisted knot under yellow chiffon.

On the cot beside her patient, Aeris slept like the dead. Not so with Yuffie. She scowled and muttered in an alien language all her own, nostrils flaring with the occasional sharp inhalation. There was no unnatural stillness to her this time, no deathly pallor, but something in him clenched like the hand on her comforter, pale knuckles highlighted by the bruising.

Nanaki was curled tight at the bedside, tail tip burning low, glinting off the scar tissue that covered the dead socket. Vincent wouldn't have trusted the coverlet near an open flame, either. Still, there was an uncomfortable twist beneath his ribs, the urge for the pack to pile together for warmth, for safety, for comfort.

As if in answer to his thoughts, Yuffie made a sound that was not quite a moan, and Nanaki echoed it and stretched a moment later. Neither woke.

He stood at the foot of her bed for some time. He dared not check how long.

* * *

Nine hours, give or take.

He came to himself at the foot of her bed, clenching and unclenching his good hand. Cid's heavy footsteps caught his attention; the pilot picked his way across the floor toward Sephiroth's cot. The swordsman sat up as Cid approached, nodded, and started toward the stairs.

Cid started toward the bed Cloud and Tifa shared, yawning, scratching a hand through his hair.

Vincent's eyes flickered to Tifa, to the stairs, to Yuffie's pale expressionless face. 

He would be more use keeping watch outside.

"Wait."

The pilot started, feet scuffing to a sudden halt. "Vince?"

"I'll go. Let her sleep."

"Right y'are," Cid muttered. He clapped Vincent on the shoulder as he passed, too weary to say more, tactful enough not to mention Vincent's unintentional vigil.

* * *

Thirteen hours.

The rain had not ceased, and Vincent had listened to every minute of it. His watch had ended more than an hour ago, but sleep would not come, and he knew better than to try. Sephiroth had either taken great pains to improve his technique since Yuffie had last accused him of pretending to sleep, or had dropped off almost immediately he had returned to the bunker. Given the lengthy campaign against Wutai, Vincent suspected the latter.

Yuffie was kicking in her sleep again, had been since he had come back downstairs. Nanaki had retreated to the bed beyond Aeris; whether unable to sleep near the noisy movements or unwilling to receive a flailing limb to the face, Vincent was uncertain.

One foot protruded from beneath the blankets. The pattern of her missing sock stood out clearly against the remaining grime. Vincent dropped the blanket back over her foot, made a brief effort to coax it back onto the mattress, but Yuffie would have none of it; she scowled and muttered, kicking out in surprisingly strong retribution. He caught the foot in the palm of his hand, covered it again, and let it rest. Yuffie made a small, satisfied noise, and turned her face back into her pillow, thrusting a bare arm out over the edge of the bed. Her fingers quested vaguely; for Nanaki, he supposed.

Without examining the notion too closely, he crouched beside her and offered his gloved palm. Her fingertips skated over the leather, down to the loose cuff of his shirtsleeve, where they settled on the narrow strip of his bare skin. The hairs on his forearm stood.

Galian bowed their head; Vincent only just prevented himself from butting his forehead against her dangling wrist. He froze there, caught between the urge to snatch back his hand, and the urge to nuzzle hers.

It was canine instinct to offer physical comfort. Such instincts were hardly inhuman, but there was a lump in his throat, something cold and burning in the pit of his stomach.

Carefully, Vincent shifted so that he could lean against the chest of drawers without breaking contact with her fingers. He ended up partly wedged between bed and bedside chest, elbow propped on the strut that supported the mattress, Yuffie's fingers hooked between sleeve and forearm.

She still muttered and shifted, but her kicking had stilled, and her eyelids no longer twitched with the unseen motion of her eyes.

Vincent rested his head against the edge of the mattress. Yuffie seemed satisfied; Galian was watchful, but still. He would stay until the next watch began.

* * *

"Comfortable?"

Vincent's breath caught in his throat; his eyes snapped open, pupils narrowed to pinpoints in the unexpected light.

Eighteen hours. Nineteen, perhaps.

Aeris covered her mouth with one hand, entirely failing to disguise a smile. "Sorry to wake you. It didn't _look_ very comfortable, though."

It was not. His body creaked and crackled as he edged forward, carefully disengaging Yuffie's now-fistful of his sleeve and rising to his full height with an interesting assortment of dull pops. Aeris watched, amused. He refused to allow the percolation of anxiety free reign over his facial muscles.

"It was a good idea," said the healer, green eyes bright. "She's been sleeping calmly — and she has some of her colour back."

Vincent glanced at the bed and saw that it was true; Yuffie no longer looked wan and sallow. And…

"Her magic," he said, and Aeris nodded.

"Not quite recovered, but it's getting there. Before, it was…" Aeris tapped her lips with the tip of one finger. "Her walls were down, and her magic was spilling out everywhere. She couldn't stop it. But she's pulling it back into her skin, getting it under control again. I think she'll be all right, when she wakes up."

The tension did not evaporate, but it loosened, tuned him back to a lower octave. He nodded, once.

"You should hold on to this for her." Aeris pressed something hard into his palm; the cold passed through his glove to his bare skin. Her fingers were not much warmer than the split materia. "I found it in her pocket, beside this."

She held up another, brighter materia. Vincent's eyes narrowed as he recognised the split Leviathan.

"She found another?"

"Looks that way."

Aeris held out the split Leviathan. It warmed one side of his palm. The two halves did not glow, but they did not seem to absorb light like their colder counterpart.

Vincent thought of Staniv and the strange, quiet girl Reeve had brought back from the ocean. Both had fused split materia. The Summon's host had perished.

He listened to the rain and wondered uneasily if Leviathan would accept Godo's sacrifice as its only due.

* * *

Twenty-one hours.

Sephiroth, rather pointedly, brought him a chair.

* * *

Yuffie made a soft sound, querulous, indistinct. It took him a moment to realise that her eyes were open, and she had made the sound on purpose.

Twenty-eight hours. Vincent breathed.

"Yuffie."

She blinked slowly at him, as if she were not quite awake. "…hey."

Her voice was cracked and dry. He reached for the glass on her side table and crouched beside the bed to help her take a mouthful. "How do you feel?"

She watched him from less than a foot away, normally clear grey eyes heavy with storm clouds.

"We didn't drown," she whispered. "How 'bout that."

She remembered, then. Vincent could not hold her eyes.

"You have the Gigas to thank for that."

Her hand found his brass fingers, tightened over one claw. "Thanks."

_Even after—_

He cut off the thought before it could properly begin. "I should fetch Aeris." Her hand twitched. He looked up.

Her eyes were red with tiredness, with tears. They flowed over her dark eyelashes. She made no attempt to stop them.

"Not yet," she said. Her voice was rough, uneven, and her fingers were tight around his claw.

Galian whined their distress, and Vincent clamped his jaw on the lupine urge to lick her face, offer support and submission and comfort. He laid his human hand on hers, and she let him gently lift her skin away from the sharp brass edges.

He didn't let go. Her lower lip wobbled.

"I'll have to—" Gulp. Snuffle. "—want to. Go to Wutai."

There were ceremonies. Inherited duties. As much as they crushed her, she wouldn't let them fall.

"I'll talk to Cloud." He didn't move. "Yuffie…"

Her grip tightened as she swallowed, got herself under control. "Th-there's something else?"

"Staniv." He couldn't meet her eyes, but he heard the breath the sob crushed out of her lungs. "He left a message. I do not read the language well, but I have... tried... to recreate it."

The note, and the materia that had accompanied it, were already on her bedside. She stared at them when he put them into her hands, but she did not appear to read them.

"You can get Aeris now."

Vincent bowed his head slightly — she was Lady of Wutai now, in fact if not in ceremony — and stood to obey her orders. Something glinted beside the dusty glass of water.

He paused a moment, debating, but she'd seen his hesitation. He plucked the split materia pairs, the dark and the bright, and held them in an open palm. An apology was caught in his teeth, in his throat, and he couldn't work it loose.

She took the materia. They clicked dully together as she transferred them from her palm to the bedclothes covering her stomach.

"They're mine now," she said, and managed a smile through her tears. "Whether I want them or not."


	23. Dragon

[Day 19, 1600 Wutai Standard Time]

The split materia didn't roll well in her hand, but there was something comforting in the chase of cold and heat across her palm. It distracted from her stomach, at least. The storms had been awful, but she didn't need the weather to feel sick.

Home had come into view two hours ago, rust red nestled in amongst the green and blue. Leviathan's colours, but she couldn't wear those. Not yet.

She'd begged a blouse from Elena and Cid had found faded lemon shorts in Shera's workshop. Pink wasn't quite peach, but it was close, and Aeris had produced a second, pale green ribbon from somewhere on her person without prompting. Both were tied around her left wrist, looped tight to keep the ends out of her way. It would do until they got there, but she hoped Cid would be able to pull off some magic and land on palace grounds. She could just imagine the expressions on—

Her throat tightened. She cleared it, took a deep breath, shut down the pain. She'd just have to imagine, now. That was all.

The note Vincent had written out so painstakingly was jammed into the left cup of her bra, warm and crumpled spikily over her heart. She didn't want to look at it any more, but she didn't really have to. The stiff, arthritic characters — so unlike Staniv's usual hand, and Vincent's — were waiting behind her eyelids when she blinked.

_Godo. Water God. Contain. Heritage. Witness._

He could have meant so many things, but she refused to believe he'd joined the Imbued of his own free will, so that cut out half of them. Vincent could have miswritten any of it, too, but she didn't think he would. So over and over, the words ran through her head:

_Godo contained the Water God. Witness your heritage._

If he hadn't been deliberately obtuse — and that was a big if, even on his deathbed — then it sounded like something to do with her ancestry. Her first guess was her mother's, but then why mention Godo? But the Kisaragi had nothing to do with Leviathan.

She closed her fingers on the fistful of materia and stuffed the whole lot back into her pockets. Hell, maybe all he'd been trying to say was that Godo was the Leviathan-Imbued.

_Too slow, as usual, old man. But hey, thanks for playing._

Boots on the catwalk made her look up. Cloud looked as sick and weary as she was, but there was a determined jut to his chin, and her teeth locked into a hard grin at the sight of him.

"We disembark in twenty minutes." He slid down the wall to crouch beside her. "Is there anything else you need us to do?"

"Honestly? Stay out of the way." It was blunt, but she didn't have the energy to make it otherwise. "It's going to be confused enough, and outside help hasn't been our favourite thing since the Shinra."

Cloud nodded. "How long do you think it'll take?"

She shrugged. "Today? Couple hours. But the funeral will be tomorrow, and after that..." She didn't even want to think about it. There was too much to deal with, and she didn't want any of it. "How fast do you think Reeve can built a robot me?"

"Not fast enough," Cloud said, clapping her on the shoulder. "Grab what you need. I'll see you on the observation deck."

* * *

The courtyard was blessedly silent, other than the susurrus of rain.

Vincent sank onto the wooden platform obscured by the bower of a sculptural wisteria trellis. He wondered which Kisaragi had first crafted this garden, and how many of their ancestors had hidden here over the centuries.

The antechamber had erupted with protest the moment Yuffie made her plans known, but she had been firm. There had been no stamping of feet, no raised voice, just a flattening of her mouth and a squaring of shoulders that left all in little doubt as to how easy it would be to change her mind. She'd returned to speaking to the servants in rapid, clipped Wutaian and when half of the clustered staff had bowed and hastened from the room, Yuffie had turned on her heel and left with the three who remained.

The shocked silence that had followed had not lasted long enough.

For his part, Vincent understood their affront. But he also understood more of Wutaian politics. Yuffie could not afford to argue, not while things were so unsettled. Walking away, as if their counsel meant nothing, had been her only choice, at least in front of the serving men and women. Had Reeve not started trying to explain why AVALANCHE shouldn't be offended, that might have been that. Vincent had slipped from the room as the argument began.

Wearily, he tilted his chin upward, staring through the foliage at the storm clouds. The few trailing blossoms were the same colour as the clouds, the humidity turning their fresh grape scent into something thick, almost fetid. The odour was familiar, but he could not place it.

There were far too many things he could not place, too many of them to do with Wutai.

To his right, there was a soft hiss and the clatter of a doorframe. Careful footsteps in high clogs. Vincent turned his head to see through the foliage and saw tiny feet stepping from the edge of the verandah onto smoothly polished stone.

He sat up, and the movement made Yuffie freeze mid-step, eyes wide.

He felt similarly frozen. The odd assortment of clothing she had donned aboard the airship had been mourning colours, he knew, and she could not have been taken seriously by her council had she worn them. Understanding that had not quite prepared him for the sight of Yuffie in traditional dress.

The outer robe was a pale cream, lightly patterned and run through with faint pearlescent silk. There were nine layers underneath it, pale gold and peach and green. Vincent only vaguely recognised the design on the wide belt, but that too was mostly cream with pale gold edging. The wan colours washed her out, made her dark hair darker still.

In the midst of all that light, her eyes stood out like thunderheads illuminated by lightning.

"Vincent," she said, and the barest hint of breathlessness said he'd surprised her just as much. "I… thought you'd all still be in the main house."

Hoped, Vincent thought, but let it go. "The rest are, as far as I am aware." He paused, wondering whether to comment, but by the time he had decided, she'd pre-empted him.

"This isn't even the most formal thing I should wear," she said, lips pulling to one side — grimace or smirk? "And once they all arrive, it'll be too hot to wear the jacket."

"It brings out your eyes."

Chaos had been unusually obliging of late, but did not deign to open the face of the earth and swallow him whole. Yuffie blinked, lips parting for a moment in surprise. Amusement and pleasure were not far behind.

"I'll make sure to flutter my eyelashes, then," she said, and straightened her shoulders to continue across the courtyard. Vincent stood, and bowed, as best as he was able.

"Myto."

* * *

With the braziers stoked and so many people gathered, the council chamber was stifling. Yuffie's hair clung to the back of her neck, painting sweaty rivulets to her collar. It was not, perhaps, in keeping with the dignity of the Lady of Wutai, but it did stop Gen from coughing every eight or nine seconds, and Hattori had stopped cracking his wrists and knuckles.

Plus, she'd slipped a Fire Bangle on under the haori.

The formal clothing had not raised a stir, but Haru, eldest daughter of Shirakawa House and Yuffie's childhood babysitter, kept shooting her fretful glances. The older generation was more circumspect, but Grandmother Asako's face was set, resignation in every crease of her eleven million year old face.

Figured her psychic powers would extend to bad news as well as who'd eaten the last dumpling.

"You all know that my father and his retainer Staniv vanished almost three weeks ago," she began, when they had settled. "Most of you are also aware that I have spent this time working with AVALANCHE and Neo-Shinra to discover their location and the reason for their abrupt departure."

Water. Be like water.

"I have called you all here to inform you that Kisaragi Godo, fourteenth lord of Kisaragi House and eleventh lord of Wutai, was slain two days ago." Still, cold, calm, never mind how some expressions change at her careful phrasing, how their shoulders slump— "His body cannot be recovered."

Water.

"Lord Staniv was found alive, but succumbed to his wounds shortly afterward. He was able to provide some information about the circumstances of their departure, which I and my allies in AVALANCHE and Neo-Shinra continue to pursue."

To her left, Grandfather Gen straightened crooked shoulders as far as he could. "In the absence of a council, we, the heads of our respective houses, will assist you in any way we are able." Missing teeth muffled the words, but his tone was crisp. "Funeral arrangements must be made."

Katsura bobbed her head. "Arrangements are underway. The ceremony will be held before dusk tomorrow."

"So hasty," mused Hattori, running a thumb over the hair on his upper lip. "Surely you need more time to—"

"Do you plan to abandon us so soon, Lady Yuffie?" Calfak, Haru's father, had none of his daughter's diplomacy. Yuffie felt her nails against her palms, but her face remained impassive.

"I plan to see the organization that forced me to take my father's life destroyed," she said, and heard Katsura's low gasp. "I can't do that from here."

Calfak eyed her for a long moment, narrow mouth pursed. She didn't move, and her expression didn't change. Finally, the elder Shirakawa bowed his head. "I apologise for my outburst. The circumstance is regrettable, but Shirakawa will assist you in any way possible."

"My thanks, Lord Shirakawa."

Grandmother Roko cleared her throat softly. "Wutai cannot be long without a leader, Lady Yuffie," she said. "And yet, it is not appropriate for you to take your father's place immediately, nor for your father's retainers to go unmourned. Especially before you reach your majority."

"Five times five days," Grandmother Asako interrupted. Her voice was soft and whispering like dry reeds, and yet she still managed to speak over the rest of them. "Suitable mourning for the Lord of Wutai and his valued retainers. And sufficient time to consider who to choose as your own counsel and support, Lady Yuffie."

"Five times five days," Yuffie repeated. Her stomach rolled.

They had to stop the Imbued before then, or she'd lose her chance at avenging any of them.

* * *

Aeris sat on the porch outside Kisaragi House, bare feet tucked up to one side, cooling mug of tea to the other. She could see cloaked blurs running from shop to shop, trying to prepare for the funeral, but the constant rain muffled all sound. It was as though she sat at the edge of one world, peering into another.

Across the square, as the sun reached its invisible zenith, priests in bloody coral drew back the iron bar together and let it go to strike the enormous iron bell. Again. Again.

The sound cut through the rain, reverberating up through her ankles and hips to her jaw. Four strikes, five, and the acolytes filed slowly from the bell house into the rain that wouldn't stop. Couldn't stop.

Aeris closed her eyes and waited to hear something other than ringing.

She tilted her head back in time to see Sephiroth slide back the door. His brows gave a strange quirk, as though he had not realised she was here.

Aeris patted the wood beside her, and took up the tea so it could warm her hands.

"It was not my intent to disturb you," Sephiroth said. He sank down beside her neatly, feet tucked under his knees as though he was preparing to meditate.

"But you have been wanting to talk to me," she said, tilting her head, and Sephiroth eyed her warily. "It's not hard to see, if you're paying attention."

"I've been speaking to the President about Feather. It seems she is afraid to go out in the rain." Sephiroth paused. "Specifically, she is afraid to go into the rain here in Wutai. Why do you suppose that is?"

Aeris eyed the puddles forming beside the porch, wondering how to answer. She got the impression that Sephiroth would be able to tell if she weren't entirely truthful, though she wasn't certain what he'd do about it. And she needed to talk to someone, if she couldn't understand the Planet.

"The Water God is angry."

Sephiroth waited.

"Feather has some connection with Shiva, right? And we know that Yuffie's family has some connection with Leviathan." Aeris shrugged her shoulders, still holding the tea cup between her fingertips. "Maybe Feather's afraid to go out because she knows who Leviathan is angry with."

"You know," Sephiroth said, eyes narrowing shrewdly.

"I can guess. I don't think Feather's in any danger, though."

Sephiroth ran a hand through his hair, the movement so like Cloud, so like Zack, that for a moment she wondered if both had learned it from copying the General. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she realised both had probably developed the habit independently — not from Zack, but because of him.

"Care to share the joke?"

Aeris shook her head and put down her mug again, the smile blossoming fully across her face. "You reminded me of someone," she said, and was surprised to see Sephiroth's eyes round and then soften in slow understanding.

"He was a good man."

"He said that about you, too." Without thinking, she rested her hand atop his. Sephiroth flinched, and she pulled back in surprise, but he seemed perturbed by that as well. "I'm sorry, I just—"

"Your fingers are burning," he said, with an almost owlish expression, and she rubbed her fingers together ruefully.

"I guess I didn't notice."

The silence beside her grew thoughtful. Aeris couldn't think how to fill it, so she waited. And waited. And finally, Sephiroth leaned forward slightly, as if it would help him to see through the storm.

"I haven't seen rain like this since the war."

Zack had told her about it, joked that he'd been able to tame his hair for once. Aeris couldn't imagine that much rain.

"There were superstitions amongst the troops that Leviathan himself opposed us," Sephiroth continued. "At the time, I assumed it was the Lady Kisaragi, who had come to every negotiation decked in materia."

He stared into the rain, face impassive, as if he girded himself against his own words.

"Now… it is difficult to be sure. It is difficult to be certain, but I think I sense it — the anger you describe."

Zack had said he was perceptive, but… "Do you suppose that has something to do with the experiments the Shinra ran?"

"It's possible. Perhaps, probable." He straightened his spine, long hands resting on his knees. "And if that is the case, there is at least one other who should be capable of sensing it."

* * *

[Day 20, 1745 Wutai Standard Time]

Vincent stood apart from much of the crowd, a long, narrow sketch in charcoal. He had abandoned cloak and bandanna; he had no right to formal mourning dress, but at least he could remove the Wutaian colour for good fortune from his person. In minutes, when the sun set, he would be all but invisible.

A part of him wanted to be. It felt wrong to be recognised as he stood to mourn with the village, as though their leader had meant something to him — something more than the father of a dear friend, an otherwise distant political figure, no more to him than Rufus Shinra had been.

Cloud would have it worse, he knew. And yet there was something to be said for a blade the size of Ultima Weapon; if nothing else, it discouraged conversation.

To the west, the last crimson smear of daylight in the clouds was vanishing behind the mountains. The villagers around him stirred and straightened, looking toward the low bridge that spanned the Leviathan. Vincent watched the sun. The moment that the burning line on the horizon faded, the acolytes straining at the hammer of the great iron bell released it. At this distance it was a wall of sound, startling even those who expected it; his heart throbbed too fiercely, his pupils flared with the adrenaline.

For a moment, he could smell — hear — everything.

Sharp pain, cold fangs at his elbow, brought him back to himself. He flexed the gauntlet carefully, detaching its blades from flesh, and dropped the arm back to his side.

On the bridge, black-clad officials shuffled back from the rail, the shadows beneath their umbrellas retreating as Lady Wutai stepped forward to greet the assembly. In the last pink rays reflecting from the western clouds, she was a small pale sun.

Wutai bowed.

When Vincent raised his head again, Yuffie's face had not flickered. She touched two fingers to her cheek — a headset, he realised, as the speakers behind him crackled softly — and spoke.

Her Wutaian was calm, fluid, but beneath the careful phrasing he could hear something raw. It could have been the speakers, erected hastily and ill-protected from the driving rain. It could have been. But Vincent thought he recognised that particular note.

Yuffie was an accomplished liar; her voice only cracked on the truth.

There was no movement in the crowd; even the children appeared to realise the gravity of the Lady Wutai's words. Shoulders tensed and fingers tightened, but the village was silent and attentive as Yuffie outlined the circumstances of her father's death.

She spoke too fast for him to follow over the speakers, but he knew from the shifts in the shadow behind her that it was not the tale she had originally told to her council. The words poured from her to join the flow downstream, and when the tale was told, she closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath.

"E damm oui drec hud du vnekrdah un esbnacc oui, pid palyica E femm hud dfecd so vydran'c meva un rec taydr du so ytjyhdyka. Cruimt oui fecr ed, E femm canja oui yc ra tet. Pid dryd ec y lruela vun yhudran tyo."

She beckoned, and from beneath the bridge five servants of Leviathan sculled forward with Godo's death offering in tow.

"Dutyo, fa nasaspan y fynneun yht y tebmusyd, y tajudat vydran du ymm Wutai." She spread her arms wide, sopping sleeves dragging down to her elbows. As the low, narrow boat passed beneath her, she raised her eyes to the darkly clouded sky.

"Leviathan, Fydan Kut, oui pmacc ic fedr ouin daync uh drec cyt tyo. Druikr rec puto ec mucd du ic, fa ahdnicd oui fedr dra cbened uv Kisaragi Godo, dfahdo-vencd munt uv Wutai; fa ahdnayd oui, payn res kahdmo du ouin tabdrc yht gaab res cyva frema Ashura cmispanc."

In the river, the servants of Leviathan raised their hands and began a soft, slow hymn. For a moment the death offering remained in place, rocking slightly in the wake of the withdrawing initiates. Then, as the villagers picked up the hymn, the boat began to move — slow, but steady. Voices rose around Vincent, Old Wutaian words strange to his ears but the tune familiar to his lips, to the back of his throat, thrumming through his core as if the song itself were a summoning.

Near the foot of the bridge, following the path of the boat, children slithered to the edge of the water to release waxed paper boats bearing tiny votive candles. The servants of Leviathan nudged them out into the central channel, where they streamed along in the wake of Godo's effigy.

The children near Vincent began to filter carefully forward, bearing their tiny boats as if their contents would spill if moved too quickly. Vincent smelled wax and wick and fire, mud and rain, their combination distantly familiar.

Behind him, someone screamed.

He twisted, slit pupils scanning, heart in his throat. The demons flared, swelled, and he recalled the dream of fire tearing through the village, screams all around—

The girl's mother pulled her back to her feet, the indignant shriek of the muddy toddler commonplace to the crowd.

Blood rushed in Vincent's ears and he struggled to calm himself. He turned to the river, blinked at a sudden swirling blur in his vision, and then there was only the effigy, passing at a steady pace, rocking gently.

Vincent watched the boat until it vanished around the river's next curve, breathing carefully. When he looked back at the bridge, Yuffie stood still, eyes fixed, as if she could guide the effigy and her father's spirit safely into Ashura's keeping through force of will alone.

* * *

The torches were lit when Yuffie left the first bridge. Shuichi had dismissed her guards after the ceremony, after the village had returned to the squares and alleys to drink to their departed lord, but when she came to herself, Nanaki was there, flickering tail flame curled protectively beneath his belly. She slicked back his mane and twisted her fingers through it as they made their way back toward Kisaragi House.

A tall, thin shadow detached itself from the silhouette of the great bell as they approached. There was a thin, metallic grinding with each footfall. Vincent's pale face was warmed to a thin red gold, his expression strangely open with his eyebrows visible. Yuffie caught his eyes for a moment, read sadness and sympathy and patience, and her throat and eyes ached so fiercely that she couldn't bring herself to speak. She looked away, and blinked into the darkness as he fell into step beside them, on Nanaki's other side.

When they reached the house, the great cat nudged at her soggy knees with his shoulder. Vincent said, "Tifa will want you to eat."

She swallowed against the tears and the gratitude. "I'm going to take a bath and go to bed. Rice?" Even the thought of something simple made her stomach roil, but there was only so much you could do against Tifa's practiced Momma Bear.

Vincent acquiesced with a bare nod. Nanaki rubbed the whole length of his body along her knees before he followed the gunman back toward the communal areas of the house.

Yuffie stood for a moment in the entrance hall of her father's house — still her father's, for another twenty-five days — and let the tears in her eyes gradually dissipate. The layers of damp silk felt warm and comfortable, but she knew her temperature must have dropped from hours in the rain. A hot bath, as much as she could stomach of a hot meal, and a warm bed — or she'd be no use to anyone, least of all herself.

A household in mourning had minimal staff; she set the bath to filling before she shed and draped each layer of the formal mourning attire over the stands around the room. The last layer stayed with her until the steaming bathroom, where she stopped the bath water before abandoning robe and underwear in the middle of the floor.

She showered in lukewarm water, breathing in thick coils of steam. When she was clean, she sank into the perfect, scalding tub, and curled her knees to her chest.

She'd done it. They knew.

The rest was too much to think about.

The steam slipping through her lips on each breath was warm and sweet with the scent of soap. It rested lightly on her tongue, an insubstantial comfort. Inside her, knots twisted and eased, and with the lack of tension came the tears.

She didn't try to stop them. The bathwater heaved and juddered with her shoulders, smoothed out again slowly as her breathing came back under her control. She stretched out her legs and tipped back her head to watch the steam curl, carefully thinking of nothing at all.

In the too-hot water, it didn't take long for her fingers to turn into pale sour plums. Gravity returned to hang from her limbs as she hauled herself out of the water and into a steam-damp towel. She felt heavy and empty, a suit of armour built around nothing at all. She snorted as she towelled her hair dry. Maybe Vincent would let her borrow his boots.

She slid back the bathroom door, then caught sight of her discarded robe and underwear and stooped to grab them on her way out the door.

The knee glanced off her shoulder instead of driving into her diaphragm.

She fell back onto the tiles, hip and elbow sliding on steam-slick glazing, floundering, still dragging the robe by her fingertips. A flash of gold in the dark beyond the door and then there was a foot, a leg, a woman, yellow eyes glowing, materia at her throat.

Yuffie's foot hit the raised side of the bath; her left hand was steady on the grout between four tiles. There was nothing here to fight with but her own two hands and feet. She braced her arm and took a quick breath as the Imbued lunged.

The kick off the bathtub propelled her four feet across the tiles, barely out of range. She slammed into the opposite wall with a shoulder and screamed as the Imbued's lunge carried her past, screamed as loud as she could and then flung the robe in the other woman's face when she turned toward the sound. The flurry of cloth wouldn't slow her for long, but Yuffie wasn't looking; feet under and push, grab the doorframe, into the bedroom, preparing to vault for the mattress when her right leg crumpled.

The pain from her knee hit almost at the same time as the rest of the Imbued's weight in her lower back; she turned her topple into a roll, wrenched her legs and hips around and over. Grey-green leather and bright gold eyes blurred by above her, but the grip on her thigh loosened abruptly and instead of slamming into the floor, the other woman landed lightly a few feet away.

Yuffie rolled to her feet, heard the sharp crack of the wooden door opening too fast and slamming into its frame, and remembered she was naked around the same time that she remembered her mother's bladed fan was on the wall behind her.

Aeris, obviously expecting trouble, hurled the full tray of food at the Imbued; the woman deflected the rice and the dumplings, but the teapot shattered on contact with her wristguard. She yelped as pottery shards and fresh hot tea doused her neck and jaw.

Aeris darted forward to grapple with the Imbued. Yuffie twisted and lunged for the fan.

She wrenched it down from the wall, scattering hooks and nails. It opened as smoothly as it had when Yuffie was five, but now she was big enough to catch it, spin it through her hands. The weight was a little off; Yuffie was shorter than her mother had been.

Not enough to matter.

Weapon readied, Yuffie glanced up in time to see the Imbued sweep Aeris' feet out from under her; the Ancient went down hard and Yuffie launched herself forward to give Aeris time to recover.

The Imbued was still wincing from the scald, drops of liquid glinting on her jaw and forehead, but she turned her wristguard to meet the edge of the battle fan and moved her arm in a swift circle that deflected the blade and nearly wrenched the weapon from Yuffie's grip. She whirled the fan back toward the Imbued before she could force Yuffie's right arm into an awkward angle; the fan slipped between Yuffie's arm and body and she brought her left arm up to defend against a counter attack.

As she flicked the fan closed to get it into position more quickly, Aeris rose up inside the Imbued's guard, slamming the heel of her hand into the other woman's chin. The Imbued's teeth clicked together; she half-fell backward, curling into a roll on the way down, but Aeris got there first. She shoved the Imbued's shoulders down onto the tatami, drove an elbow into the woman's diaphragm, and leaned forward to put her forearm into the woman's throat.

The Imbued grabbed Aeris' hair and pulled savagely, left leg curling, trying to dislodge her. Yuffie saw the hand movement before she saw a blade; her mouth was open on a cry of warning when the kunai bit deep into Aeris's right side. Aeris leaned harder into the Imbued's throat.

Yuffie lunged, got the fan between Aeris and the blade as the Imbued pulled back for another strike, got her shin on the elbow to cut off sensation. She flicked the fan closed and touched it to the Imbued's neck, just below the ear.

"Yield."

The Imbued forced the word out, releasing Aeris's hair and flipping the knife out of reach. Yuffie made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a hiss, and kept the fan at the woman's throat.

"There is not a reason in the world to make me believe you'd yield, or let you up until we have backup. You stay where you are."

Yuffie touched Aeris's shoulder gently, mouth open to ask if she was all right, but the cold of her skin stopped the words from forming. She looked down at the wound in panic — surely she couldn't have lost so much already — but there was nowhere near enough blood, and what there was was the wrong colour. The Cetra's face was still, focused on the Imbued, whose face was beginning to purple.

"Aeris—"

"Hush."

With her free hand, Aeris touched her fingers to the artery, just beneath Yuffie's blade. The Imbued's eyes widened. She grabbed again for Aeris' hair to try to dislodge her, heedless of the blade at her throat. She kicked and spat and gurgled until finally her grip weakened and Aeris lifted her arm. She leaned close, eyes closed, fingers still against the Imbued's neck, listening, and then sat up with a satisfied nod.

"There. You can get up now."

Yuffie didn't move. Aeris had done that. Aeris of the peach cobbler and the braids and lacy underthings, Aeris who'd set every bone Yuffie broke with her gentle, delicate hands and who'd battled at arm's length with polite little taps of her staves — Aeris — had strangled a woman half to death without batting an eye, had taken a knife to the ribs without so much as a flinch. A thousand stories of vengeful corpses rose in the back of Yuffie's head. Nausea shuddered through her, and she swallowed it, and swallowed it, and said, "You're not hurt?"

Aeris looked down at her side, lifting torn fabric out of the way, and grimaced. "Well, I'm not perfect. But it's not going to slow me down."

In the back of her head, Yuffie noted the thud of footprints getting closer. Her mouth blurted, "I don't have any brains. Ask anyone. Ask Cid."

Aeris blinked and made a sound like a kitten sneezing, lips pursed against laughter. "I don't need to." The footsteps clattered to a halt, and the doorframe rattled.

Aeris managed, "Oh — Yuffie, you're still not—" before the door smashed open and Barret charged in, Missing Score whining like a reactor about to hit meltdown. Nanaki and Tifa were right behind, manes wild.

Barret's eyes widened. He about-faced sharply, gun arm to the matting.

Nanaki's ears flicked back and forth. He snorted, padded toward Yuffie, and sat down next to her with a whuff of amusement.

Tifa maintained a straight face for about four seconds, and then ushered Barret out into the hallway, chortling into her gloves. She and Aeris hoisted the Imbued woman together and carried her into the hall so that the remainder of AVALANCHE could deal with her. Nanaki stayed at Yuffie's side, ears and tail twitching toward every new sound, as Tifa ducked back in to collect pottery shards and assure Yuffie that she'd be right back with sweet spiced rice and warm milk.

Yuffie stood by the bed in the warm candle flicker of Nanaki's tail and quietly reviewed the preceding fifteen minutes.

Eventually, she remembered that she'd never quite made it to pyjamas.


	24. Bloodlines I

[Day 21, 0455 Wutai Standard Time]

Yuffie woke before the sun. The combination of watery pre-dawn light and Nanaki's tail flame made the room seem murky and alien, with nothing the colour she remembered it. Her limbs were stiff and distant; she forced herself upright and wrapped her arms around her torso, fingertips biting into her shoulders.

Someone — Tifa, she would bet — had put Oritsuru on her left side, and her mother's fan on her right. She slipped out from between them, and fought the urge to bring Oritsuru with her.

Nanaki stirred as she crept to where her clothing hung, but did her the favour of not opening his eye. Nine layers: green, gold, peach, green, gold, peach... She could have called for assistance, but it felt important to do it herself, since she wasn't expected in public today. Hakama in Leviathan's deep plum, then the pearlescent overcoat. She had just flicked her hair out over the collar when Nanaki yawned widely, tongue and whiskers furled, and stretched his forelegs out in front of him.

"Nothing happened overnight?"

He shook his head. "Cloud tried to speak to her, but she's... stubborn. Crafty. Even Aeris couldn't put her to sleep."

Yuffie nodded once. "I want to talk to her."

"Cloud said you would." Nanaki rolled laboriously to his feet and stretched his forelegs out in front of him, flexing his claws. "But you shouldn't speak to her alone. We've had to... none of the guards have lasted long," he amended.

A thin trickle of ice found its way down Yuffie's spine, and she clutched the overcoat closer. "Is everyone all right? What did she do?"

"That's just it," Nanaki said. "She hasn't moved a muscle."

* * *

"Valentine."

The gunman turned his head enough to include Sephiroth in his peripheral vision. His weapon's component parts were laid out before him on soft smudged cloth, and the fingers of his good hand danced over them without attention from their owner; Valentine's attention was focused outward, on the storm.

"So you do feel it."

That bought him a fumble, barely perceptible in the practised movements. Valentine's eyes moved from the storm to Sephiroth's face, brows slightly raised.

Sephiroth made an eloquent gesture with one hand, trying to encompass all they could see of the village, slowly filling with water. "This. The rain. Leviathan."

"The Water God?" Valentine's mouth pinched slightly at the corners, but his face remained largely expressionless. "I had not considered the option."

Something dark and bloody shifted in his gaze.

Sephiroth stilled the hand that edged toward a nonexistent sword, and looked out at the rain again. "Consider, then. I am not the only one who senses something out there."

For a moment, Valentine stilled — listening, or something close to it. The air shifted. Sephiroth heard the sharp breath, saw the pulse point in Valentine's neck jump, and then the man shook his head as if to clear it.

"I sense nothing."

"Liar."

Valentine's glare could have matched forces with a dragon. "I sense nothing worthwhile," he said, and plainly considered that an elaboration. Sephiroth felt a tickle of annoyance.

"Valentine, I myself am not overly fond of oration but it is occasionally necessary to combine a number of vocalizations into coherent sentences in order to communicate—"

The slide of a door interrupted him, and Cloud's face appeared in the crack. He nodded to Sephiroth, then peered past him.

"Vincent, do you have a minute? Yuffie wants to try her luck, and I'd rather not test ours."

Valentine nodded, weapon snapping back together in his hands as he stood.

"If you'll excuse me."

He didn't wait for a response. Sephiroth watched him go, eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

* * *

Rope and guards aside, the Imbued didn't look like a prisoner.

She sat the chair in a leisurely slouch, draped over its back like the dragon embroidery down one shoulder of her jacket. She was only small — Elena had inches on her — but her limbs were all sleek muscle beneath the green and grey leather. Her expression hadn't wavered since she'd woken, and Elena's composure was beginning to suffer.

The yellow eyes were cold and lizard-like, and the faint curl of lip on an otherwise blank Wutaian face simultaneously reminded her of Tseng and made her want to punch it.

She didn't dare. The glimmer they had taken to be green tea turned out to be crystalline scales, fanning out from the corner of her eyes to her temples and forehead. When they'd healed her burn, they'd wiped her face; the scales had shredded the washcloth.

Rude shifted from one foot to the other and rolled his left shoulder until it popped. He'd been doing it a lot, now she thought about it, and he hadn't been on watch as long as she had.

She tried to eye him without being too obvious about it. He wasn't the expressive sort, but his brows usually spoke for him, and right now they were crumpled together under the cover of his sunglasses. She tilted her head, raised an eyebrow just slightly. 

It was a Reno expression, and ordinarily it would have gotten at least a small huff of amusement. Today, he didn't seem to notice.

Her eyes flicked to the guards. One met her gaze immediately, dark eyes widening ever so slightly in expectation of an order. The other was starting to sweat, and didn't notice when she focused on him.

"You."

The second guard flinched, drew in a shuddering breath. He looked dazed, as if he had no idea where he was.

"Out. Your shift is over. Send two back — one from AVALANCHE."

"Y-yes," the guard said gratefully, and saluted before he fled. Rude shifted again, and Elena saw a trickle of sweat run down one cheek. Her mouth flattened. She reached out to take his hand. 

He flinched when she touched him, so violently his sunglasses jumped. She caught a brief flash of dark brown iris and reddened whites before he brought up one hand to settle them. His shaking fingers only made it worse.

"Rude?"

He shook his head, tried to step away, but she held fast to his hand, turned to gesture to the other guard, and then stopped.

For the first time in hours, the Imbued sat straight, head cocked, like a raptor investigating the work of its talons. Like a serpent waiting for its venom to take hold.

Elena’s blood skipped boiling and went directly to steam.

"What did you do?" She stalked toward the Imbued, dropping Rude's hand in the process, but before she could get within arm's length, he had grabbed hold of her and was hauling her back. "Rude, what— let go!"

"Don't."

It was barely a whisper. His grip was strong, but she could feel him shaking. Her lips pulled back in a frustrated snarl, and she kicked out at the Imbued's chair.

"Whatever you're doing, cut it out."

"Elena—"

"She's hurting you!"

"He's hurting himself," the Imbued said, half offended and half bored. "It's no fault of mine."

Elena couldn't stop the laugh. "You expect me to believe you have nothing to do with this? You're getting to him like you got to the others, and if you want to live, you'd better stop."

"You're ill equipped to follow through on that threat," the Imbued observed. She leaned back in faux relaxation. "Your friend would have an easier time."

"No," Rude said, but the sound was soft and choked. "Don't."

"Or what?" The Imbued's lips curled upward in a cold parody of a smile. "Will you beat me to death as well? I'm sure the leader of the Turks would be happy to get you off the hook—"

"Please."

"—again."

Elena slapped her. The blow echoed off every sharp, clean edge in the room. Blood seeped down Elena's shaking fingers, and what she'd left behind loaned colour to the scales beside the Imbued's left eye.

Behind her, beside her, Rude stood with his fists by his sides, shoulders slumped. Tears, not sweat, leaked down his cheeks beneath the sunglasses.

"I didn't mean to," he whispered.

Something cold and heavy lodged in Elena's throat. She waited.

Rude backed to the wall, rested one hand on the door. He didn't lift his eyes from the floor.

"...I just wanted them to be quiet."

The door shut behind him with a click, leaving Elena alone with the last guard and their prisoner.

When Cloud arrived with Vincent, Yuffie, and two guards in tow, she counted herself excused.

* * *

Mourning dress was not the usual attire for interrogation. Flanked by a pair of Crescents in their dark, well-wearing uniforms, her own pale jacket made her feel particularly visible, vulnerable despite the extra protection.

But she wanted the Imbued to see it. She wanted Ashura's colours to show, wanted to know whether the Imbued still recognised them for what they were, and what her response would be.

Whether there was any Wutai left in her at all.

The features were there — high, broad cheekbones edged in bronze; dark hair and lashes. The eyes were the right shape, but the sickly yellow with its narrow pupils made them strange even as Yuffie felt a vague stir of familiarity.

No one had cleaned the blood from her face. The points of crystal that protruded from her skin held an eerie flush that Yuffie was not entirely comfortable with.

"Tu oui ryja y hysa?"

The lizard pupils contracted, then broadened again, but the Imbued did not respond. Yuffie switched to Midgan.

"Do you have a name?"

The Imbued tilted her head slowly to one side. Yuffie tilted her own, keeping eye contact.

"Or is 'Bahamut-Imbued' all you've got?"

There was a slight twitch to the Imbued's lips. Surprised that they'd been able to make out the contents of the materia they'd taken from her? Pleased? Or just amused they'd checked?

"Are you trying to be stubborn? Because I have it on good authority that I could probably talk you to death." The cringing of her guards probably helped more than it hurt. "Whatever works, y'know. I've got nothing but time, and after our first trip in the Tiny Bronco, I'm pretty sure all of AVALANCHE carries emergency earplugs."

On her left, Cloud made a small sound; unlike him, but if it helped convince the Imbued, she was all for it.

"Do you even know your name? I understand that's been a bit of a problem for some of you; maybe you should stick with, I dunno, tested medical procedures in future? Materia may look a little like a bath bomb, but, turns out, they are not for dissolving and soaking in. And despite looking a little bit like neon aloe gel, neither is mako. Weird, huh?"

Cloud had one hand up to his head now; she could see it out of the corner of her eye, Chocobo spikes splaying around his bracer.

"Well, don't worry, I'm great at guessing games. We can just sit here going through names until you find one you like." She smiled and opened her mouth to begin.

And then Vincent said her name, low and strangled in his throat, and every hair down her spine prickled and stood to attention.

She turned just as he hunched in over himself, fingers clawing at air, dark hair obscuring his face. She looked to Cloud, squinting and swaying like he had the mother of all migraines, teeth gritting against each other and the cords standing out in his neck.

Yuffie whirled, ready to punch the Imbued in her smug, stupid face, but Elena's blood was still drying on the mako-scaling. She cupped the Imbued's jaw, dug in her two fingers and her thumb. The eyes flashed gold, and then glazed over. She heard the thump as Vincent slumped to the ground.

When she turned, Cloud was staggering, sweat streaming down from his hairline. Kejak had moved forward to support him; Varek was reaching for Vincent's shoulder when the gunslinger hissed out a warning.

"Vincent?" Yuffie approached carefully, half crouched, ready to spring back, but he didn't so much as twitch. He was muttering, hands still hovering half-tensed in front of him. Hallucinating? Yuffie hoped not. "Vince? Can you hear me?"

" _Hu, hu…_ "

So soft she thought it was a huff of laughter until more words followed and her tongue tried to crawl back down her throat.

" _Hu, Sudran, du rind fyc hajan so binbuca—_ "

Perfect, unvarnished Wutaian, with an almost childish lilt.

"Vincent?" She licked her lips, but her mouth was so dry. "Vincent, tu oui rayn?"

" _—dneat du upao! Bmayca— bmayca, hu…_ "

"Ymm ec famm, Vincent, oui ryja rind hu uha." Her hands slid around his wrists, the one slim and faintly damp and the other stout and hard and cold. "Oui yna eh luhdnum, oui rayn? Oui lyh tu ed. Lusa pylg huf. Rayn sa." She clamped down on his wrists, fingers whitening. " _Rayn sa_ , Vincent. Lusa pylg."

* * *

Elena found her team mates in Turtle's Paradise, and was unsurprised to see that they had foregone shot glasses in favour of a clear, white-labelled bottle. She could smell the anise from the door.

The bartender’s look as she crossed the room was not friendly, but there were bigger things to worry about. Namely Rude, braced against the table’s surface, one brown hand around the bottle, like it was beer. Reno sat shotgun, pressing down on the edge of the bottle top to make it jump and skitter. His expression was a rare one, equal parts guilty and resigned.

It was bad, then.

She didn't take a chair. Just eased around to where Rude could see her, and ran a hand through sweaty hair, trying to work out what, if anything, to say.

Rude shifted enough to lift the bottle from the table, and took a long swallow. Less than a quarter remained. How full had it been to begin with? Omni.

She walked to the bar, bought a fresh bowl of salt and assorted snack carbs, and asked for a bottle of water.

She set them both down in front of Rude, and decided she probably didn't want to touch his shoulder right now.

“That was really shitty of her,” she said. To Reno, she mouthed ‘enough’, and watched his lips pale and tighten with doubt. “If I have to come back and get you, I will.”

“Don't,” said Rude, voice thick.

Idiot that she was, she listened to him.

* * *

His hands were not behind his back, and no one was wrestling him to the ground. The grip around his right wrist remained, but the identical sensation around his left was fading to a phantom, nothing but a familiar empty tingling where his flesh left off and the claw began.

The hands on his wrists were small, and blotched with effort.

"Ec ed oui, Vincent?"

Yuffie's face was inches from his own, storm-grey eyes filled with worry. She relaxed her grip on his wrists, but her hands stayed, hot and anxious.

It was a legitimate question, a legitimate fear. Still, something in him shrank and withered.

"I am here." And despite the nightmare visions, he did not feel he had been elsewhere. "Was I… which?"

"You didn't transform," Cloud said, off to his left, and he startled — badly enough that Yuffie jerked her hands out of claw range. He clasped his bronze digits loosely in his flesh ones, and straightened slightly to catch the swordsman's weary eye. "Looks like the Imbued doesn't only work on Crescents."

"You were speaking Wutaian — flawlessly, by the way, A-plus to the Turk Linguistics Academy or wherever you picked that up — but it sounded like you were somewhere… bad." The hesitation was an uneasy one. Yuffie did not want to draw him back into it, but the fire was as strong a memory as any he had experienced.

"A dream," he said. "One I have had before. It was… unpleasant."

"Given where she pulled my head, I'm pretty sure that's the understatement of the century," Cloud said dryly. "But Yuffie — you didn't feel anything? No fog?"

"Not that I remember," she said, and frowned into the middle distance as she considered the question. "I had a few… there were a few thoughts I had, in the middle of things, but they were about—" Gulp. "—Godo. And I was trying to concentrate, so…"

"You pushed them away." Cloud eyed her for a moment, expression unreadable. Then he pushed away from the wall, and turned to the Crescents.

"We're going to need your best," he said. "People with strong wills, strong minds — no." He cut himself off, suddenly alert. "We need people who are flexible. Tacticians."

"Savim," Yuffie put in, catching on. "The sergeants. En Hua. Have them suggest others. They'll get the idea."

"Myto," said the guard, and went.

"Get Vincent out of here," said Cloud when he was gone. "I'll keep her out until reinforcements arrive."

"On it," Yuffie said. She struck dust from her trousers with flat strokes of her palms, and heaved Vincent to his feet. "And if you're right about this? I think I know what we need to make her talk."

* * *

[Day 22, 0500 Wutai Standard Time]

Elena woke to sour sweat and aniseed, and for once felt a flood of relief rather than disgust. Typical. She’d struggled so hard to fall asleep without them, only to miss them when they staggered in.

Reno was uncharacteristically contained, his usual sprawl a smaller, tighter hunch. Rude was face down, shirtless, with his glasses poking awkwardly out between his shoulder and his cheekbone. She rescued them, and his jacket from the floor, and tucked them inside a pocket. The jacket she draped over the back of a chair, making sure to keep the weapons on its seat free of encumbering fabric.

The knuckle duster was particularly hard to look at.

The questions that had kept her fretting had no more answers in the light of day. Was it better to know? Could she handle knowing more? Could she handle never knowing?

Would Rude even give her the chance to decide?

She made a coffee for herself, and then filled two glasses to take back to her colleagues. Rude never seemed to need painkillers, but she pressed a few out of the foil strip anyway, trying not to rattle the pills too loudly.

Reno’s eyes opened to a squint when she set down his glass, and he held up a hand when she offered the packet to him. “Barely had a mouthful,” he muttered. “He went straight through that first bottle and halfway through a second before he conked out.”

Strength of resolution or failure of it, Elena wondered bleakly. She drank her coffee and went to check in with Reeve. Reno might have words for her, but Rude was not going near the Imbued again if she could help it.

* * *

[Day 22, 0800 Wutai Standard Time]

Cloud was right, of course. Whatever the Imbued was doing, she was getting into their heads in tiny crevices, cracks of ignorance and doubt. She was slinky like a weasel and compelling as a snake, but Yuffie had her pegged, now, and damned if she would let the Imbued get away with it, pulling out old hurts when Vincent had to have a million, bottled up and stacked behind the dams inside his head.

Her stomach was cold and churning as she pressed Manipulate into her armlet, but two could play at this game, and she wasn't afraid of dragons. She could do more damage in her sleep.

Today she had replaced the outermost layer of her mourning robes with her father's strong dark blue, sleeves and shoulders adjusted to fit her shorter reach and narrow shoulders. The sash and under-robes shone beacon bright beneath the sober outer garments, but she no longer looked like a lantern against the servants' sympathy black, and the weight of the fabric steadied her, soothed her as surely as a hand squeezing her shoulder.

Yuffie entered the Imbued's cell with En Hua and Falim behind her, cocky smile firmly in place.

"Kuut sunhehk," she said.

Then she slammed into the Imbued's mind, hard and fast.

For most people, Manipulate was a gradual thing; it took a long time before it became reliable enough for use on the battlefield, just because it took so much effort to understand an opponent well enough to be capable of coercing them.

For Yuffie, who'd been running cons since she could toddle, the materia was the interface to a game she'd always known.

The Imbued's head jerked back as if she had been slapped, eyes rolling, and that split second's disorientation was all Yuffie needed to get in. Surface shock and deeper shame, seething fury, half-thought curses in Midgan and Wutaian, half-thought strategies hastily pulled back from Yuffie's clutching mental fingers —

— something moved —

— something big, something _huge_ —

— and Yuffie scrabbled uselessly against it, sliding down a surface whose only features were smugness and an overwhelming sense of _boredom_ , directed right at her.

She was so surprised that she lost her grip on it entirely, slammed back into her own head with spots dancing in front of her eyes, back straight, but knees watery.

There was a name on her tongue.

"I think you actually lose points for creativity," she said, and the woman in the chair — Ryyu — curled her lip. "And that must have been Bahamut. How nice we've finally met."

* * *

It took hours to pry the whole story forth; hours and tiptoeing around the dragon in Ryyu's head, but eventually Yuffie thought she understood.

She ordered the Imbued sedated, ordered a change of guard — En Hua and Falim looked shattered — and when Elena came to relieve her, she went directly to Shuichi to arrange a council meeting.

Then she went to the gardens, and tried not to puke into the koi pond.

* * *

Vincent found her in the hydrangeas, sipping at something that smelled of lime and dandelion greens.

"Surely there are alternatives," he said, without preamble, and Yuffie's lips flattened over her cup.

"I could have done much worse." She looked up at him, eyes dark with warning. "I _wanted_ to do worse. But I didn't.""And you won't." It wasn't a question, but Yuffie shrugged one shoulder with affected carelessness.

"I won't promise that."

"Yuffie..."

"No, Vincent." She set down her cup in its saucer with finality, stood up and looked him in the eye. "She's murdered my father — destabilised my country, never mind my palace guard. I'm not going to mince around on the eggshells of morality while she and her little gang try to wipe us out. Because that's what they're doing, Vincent. That's what they want. And if you think I am not going to do everything in my power to stop it—"

She choked on the words, furious tears threatening to spill, and he reached forward to take her cup before she could fling it aside.

"I'm not proud of it, Vincent," she said. "I don't think it's right. But if Wutai is safe, I can live with it."

Pride and guilt and sorrow swarmed, and he couldn't say a word. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and disappeared, piece by piece, behind the jagged, too-sharp armour of a smile.

"The council will have gathered by now."

"Myto," he said, and she left before she could interpret disagreement as something worse.

* * *

She took time to steady herself before she entered the council chamber; Vincent had been the last person she wanted to see. She took a heartbeat. Two. When ten weren't enough, she pushed the doors wide and took her seat with no hesitation.

The Shirakawa were here already, Calfak's broad fingers drumming on the tabletop with the rain. Grandfather Gen and Grandmother Roko were sunk into chairs on either side of a brazier, looking as idly content as two cats sharing a sunbeam. Katsura entered, smiled at Hattori's sudden twitch, and bent to murmur to Yuffie.

"Shu will be in soon — Asako's garden has turned into a moat."

Yuffie nodded. There was no point starting until Asako arrived, so she found herself listing and re-listing what she knew, as if the truth was a puzzle box and stating things differently might reveal a hidden catch.

By the time Shuichi and Asako arrived, the one more bedraggled than the other, she had set hooks to every likely-looking snag. But knowing where the gaps were didn't fill them.

"I persuaded our assassin to share some information," she said when they were settled. "I'm reasonably certain that it's true, or at least, that she believes it is. But a lot of that information I can't corroborate."

Calfak's heavy hand closed, and he leaned forward with a frown. "Meaning what?"

"Her memories don't match any history I know." Yuffie spread her hands, corners of her mouth trying for a smile. "I'm not a model student, but I'm sure I'd remember this."

Haru's frown was gentler than her father's, but her eyes were no less sharp. "You said ... this was a young woman, not yet thirty."

"Yes. But you'd think that about the woman found with President Tuesti," said Yuffie. "She's either a clone, or fifty years older than she looks. We don't know how long the Imbuing process takes, but we know it slows down the ageing process a _buttload_. And if her memories are right and our records don't cover them, then she and the whole Imbuing process might be a whole lot older than we thought."

"Perhaps she is confused," Gen offered quietly. Behind him, Roko straightened and frowned. "Any of your elders could tell you that memory becomes less trustworthy over time."

"That's the problem," Yuffie said, leaning forward on her elbows. "If she's mistaken about this, she could be mistaken about anything. Any information we get from her might be worthless."

Silence.

Gen looked at Roko. Roko frowned more deeply, tucking her chin closer to the warm folds of her shawl. Asako cleared her throat, and tapped her fingers lightly on Shuichi's sopping forearm.

"This is a matter for your elders," she said, and Roko's cheeks puffed like toadfish.

"This is hardly the time—"

"Oh, dry up," said Asako mildly. "She must be told eventually, and three weeks and a signature makes little difference where a leader is concerned. Clear the room," she added sharply, and the Shirakawa, Hattori, and Shuichi rose at once. Katsura remained in place for a few scant moments, long fingers curling before her as if to grasp a protest, but she soon bowed her head and followed Shuichi from the room.

Yuffie, who had dared to hold out hope, felt something cold settle in the pit of her stomach.

"It's true, then," she said. "The children—"

"Tell us what you saw," Asako said. "We can correct, or elaborate, as you go."

* * *

"According to the elders, it started decades earlier than we thought." Yuffie tried to put her thoughts in some kind of order, but it felt like she was moving through toffee. If she could get through this tonight, if she could get it all through to them, maybe tomorrow she could just let everyone else do the thinking. "Before the Jenova project, before SOLDIER, there were — the old texts called them kutsymman."

"God-callers," Sephiroth finished, his tone wondering. "Summoners."

Yuffie nodded, swallowed around a dry tongue. "They didn't need materia. Some of them used artefacts or rituals, but Grandma Asako says the most important thing was strength of spirit, the ability to keep themselves grounded in the face of that much magical power."

Tifa made a soft sound, pulled her fingertips away from her mouth. "The records," she said. "In Nibelheim, they said — the tanks and the mako in them, they raised subjects' resistance to magic over time."

"Right," Yuffie said. "But we're not there yet. It was never common, but that spiritual strength faded over generations, the same way that the bloodline of the Ancients diluted over time. In most places, it died out hundreds and hundreds of years ago."

"But Wutai is an island," Sephiroth said, as if he had begun to understand, and Reeve made a similar noise of comprehension. Yuffie nodded, trying not to catch anyone's eye.

"A small, isolated population? It took way longer to dilute, especially since most of the summoners had been from the noble families. Grandma Asako said—" Yuffie stopped, swallowing hard. She'd said so many things, all of them difficult to hear. "They were still putting children with potential through the training when she had her second son. That's fifty years, give or take."

"A short interval to lose a practice and all its practitioners," Sephiroth said, eyes narrowing.

"It wasn't lost." Yuffie took a careful mouthful of tea in the silence, tongue pressed behind her teeth to stop her jaw from clenching. "Wutai had been receiving visitors from the east for a long time, so when a delegation came to the city from a large eastern company, no one thought much of it. They were very interested to learn about Wutai. Especially our summoners in training.

"See, they'd done some research and turned up other summoners throughout history, but Wutai was the only place to see them in the flesh. They went around to all the noble houses inviting acolytes back to their city, offering them the chance to see the world in exchange for participating in their research."

Barret's face was still, dark eyes unreadable, lips pressed together so hard that they looked like a pale pink scar across his face. Reeve looked like he'd been told one of his bridges had collapsed on an animal hospital.

Aeris reached out and took Yuffie's hand. Her cold grip was strangely reassuring.

"A few agreed, but not many. The scientists stayed on through harvest, trying to convince the rest, and get as much information as they could in the meantime. And then..." Yuffie took a quick breath, and ploughed ahead. "There was an accident, during the festival of the dead. One of the younger acolytes managed to tap into his powers much earlier than anyone expected, and– and he lost control. There was a lot of damage, a lot of people got hurt, and in the middle of everything, the scientists started saying that anyone with summoner potential should go with them, participate in their studies and learn to use their abilities safely."

"And people were scared, so they agreed to it," said Tifa softly. Yuffie nodded grimly.

"Even here, summoners with that much power were few and far between. It had been a long time — nearly a generation — since the last one, and without a practicing summoner to guide the acolytes..."

"They were fortunate not to have had such a mishap before." Sephiroth's voice was conscientiously level. "I suppose these acolytes formed the basis for imbuing, and for infusing SOLDIER members with mako."

"From the letters Asako showed me, I think so," Yuffie confirmed. "After a year or so, they stopped hearing from the acolytes, one by one. Shinra wrote to tell us about more accidents, but when we were still trying to avoid war, people were forbidden from talking about it. And, well, afterward... Afterward, it stuck."

"The Bahamut-Imbued confirms this?" Cloud asked. Yuffie bit the tip of her tongue before she replied.

"Gorov," she said. "She's Chekhov's mother's older sister. Asako showed me photos, and I saw— pieces. She remembers."

A heavy silence fell upon the table. Yuffie poured herself more tea and stared at a small stalk, floating upright. She tapped the cup sharply with one finger, and the stalk sank to the bottom.

"Where does this leave us?" Cloud said at last.

Yuffie rested her nose on the rim of the cup and inhaled its citrine warmth.

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "But from Gorov's memories, and the letters I read... Shinra had a lot of trouble reproducing the effect of the imbuing reliably. People with that much spiritual strength, they're rare, and not all of them have what it takes to control a summon. Gorov thinks that, in the beginning at least, they only succeeded with summoners."

"The fuckin' Imbued thinks," Reno muttered under his breath, and Yuffie put down her cup.

"Gorov was trained to be a summoner from a young age," she said flatly. "She spent half her childhood in the temple on the far side of Da Chao, learning to control her abilities. From her thoughts, from our experience — she's one of the most successful subjects of imbuing. Why do you think she's been causing so much havoc?"

"Magic," Aeris said. "Spiritual power. She doesn't need her hands to hurt us."

"Right. Now." Yuffie pressed at the hinge of her jaw, trying to ease the ache there. Tifa reached across the table and grabbed her by the wrist.

"You need to rest," she said. Yuffie agreed wholeheartedly, but she couldn't sleep just yet. She looked to Reeve.

"Feather's one of them," she said. "Or she was, they tried to make her be. That's how she stopped Ayuki, and how she put Shiva back in the materia. But when Godo died..." Yuffie waved a hand at the north wall, and thunder crashed obligingly. "Leviathan escaped his vessel. There wasn't a summoner there to control him."

"But Feather can only understand Shiva," Reeve said, dismay colouring his tone. "She can't understand Leviathan — she's said so. I didn't understand, but with all of this in front of us, that must be what she meant. She can't control him either."

Yuffie nodded wearily. "And that's where we're stuck, for now. Asako's volunteered to talk to Gorov some more, see if she can winkle out the details. Don't worry," she added to Tifa's stricken expression. "Grandma Asako could take a double-cast to the face and still smack you with her walking frame. She's got the constitution of a tidal wave."

She pushed back her chair, and AVALANCHE began to filter from the room, stretching and grimacing as they went. Aeris gave her hand one last squeeze, then leaned past to pick up the tea set. Vincent's shadow detached itself from the back corner, and made to give the brazier a wide berth.

She took a breath, raised her hand to get his attention.

"Vincent," she said. "Hold up."

He wasn't the only one to pause; she saw Tifa's frown and the twist of Cid's lips and knew there would be questions later, but there was only so long she could keep this to herself.

"One last thing."


	25. Bloodlines II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've seen reviews asking for clarification of the Wutaian - I'll double back and add translations when I'm done with the ending and epilogue, but in the mean time you can find an Al Bhed translator if you want to know what the 'Wutaian' phrases are.

The last footsteps had quieted when she gestured for Vincent to sit. The gesture was stiff, nervous; most unlike her, especially in such an exhausted state. He sat, to prevent her from craning her neck.

"I don't know how to say this," she said, hands flat against the table, on either side of a slim cardboard folder. "I'm too tired, and it's going to come out wrong, but I can't just keep it to myself, and I don't think I'm going to be able to say it any better no matter how long I wait."

There was no response to make to this pronouncement, but Vincent found his hands hovering over the arms of his chair, pulse and breath climbing steadily. What needed to wait until they were alone?

Something private. Something... personal.

She wouldn't meet his eyes. The moisture in his mouth vanished.

"Yuffie..."

"Just give me a minute," she said, eyes still fixed on the tabletop. Her fingers curled until her hands were fisted loosely against the lacquer, and then she pushed herself upright and looked him square in the face.

"There's some other information here that I thought you'd want to see before the others do. If, if you want them to." She swallowed, and her eyes dropped again. "I'm… not sure what this will mean to you. But it's probably going to come as a bit of a shock."

She slid the folder across the polished table top toward him with both hands, fingertips resting on the corners. He pulled it toward himself, equally formally, and flipped the folder open.

The collection barely even warranted a container: two photographs, some clippings from a faded newspaper, and a worn fabric patch with an embroidered house sigil. Vincent frowned at the clippings, looked up for an explanation, and found Yuffie watching him with an expression he could not name. He brushed the clippings aside and cautiously retrieved the photographs.

The first was a formal portrait; a young man and woman, projecting hesitant joy, fingers entwined to better display the scale and sea shell bracelet worn by the woman. Newly married, Vincent surmised, or about to be. The woman was tall for a Wutaian, and the heavy dressing had not eliminated the wilder tendencies of her hair. The man's features were sharp, though softened by affection, and the bone and ochre of the photograph seemed appropriate for his light, clear eyes.

The second was of considerably lower quality, cut from a broadsheet. He'd have called it a class photograph, except that it appeared to consist of only three students: two young girls and a boy, standing with chests puffed out in front of a gently smiling woman in temple robes.

Despite the changes in her appearance, he recognised the Bahamut-Imbued immediately: the gleam of pride in her eyes, the arrogant curl to her grin.

It took longer to realise he was staring at himself.

"The short clipping goes with the second photo," Yuffie said into his silence. "Three acolytes accepted into the temple for further training. The square clipping commemorates the conclusion of the Shimusou family line after the death of Shimusou Rachin."

She took a deep breath, and Vincent fixed his attention upon the third clipping, as awkwardly shaped as a wooden tile in a child's game. His eye caught the character for fire, latched onto the date, and the varnished table screeched as the gauntlet tensed abruptly against its surface.

"This is about the accident at the festival," he said. Yuffie nodded cautiously.

"There isn't much detail in there, but as far as I can tell, only two acolytes danced the festival that night." She tapped a finger on one corner of the photograph. "One of them was Gorov. She remembers it, but she's certain that she didn't summon that night."

Vincent swallowed against a dry throat, remembering visions he had taken for nightmares. "It was like it was ready. Waiting to be called. I held it for a moment, and then..." And then it had shifted, exploded from his fingertips, and the screaming—

"Chaos did what it does best," Yuffie said, leaning forward as if to grasp his hand. He snatched it out of reach before he could stop himself, remembering fire bursting from his palms and fingertips.

"They gave me to the Shinra, then," he said, low, choked. "Small wonder."

This time, Yuffie did lunge across the table, gripping his fingers as though she could hold him back from the abyss of grief and guilt, the rattling moan of the Gigas.

"They stole you, Vincent," Yuffie said, short, blunt nails carving crescents in his wrist. "They convinced you that it was all for the best when you were too young and too vulnerable to know any better and they took you away before anyone could tell you otherwise." She tightened her grip viciously, until he looked her in the face. "Your mother put herself at death's door trying to find you, and your father refused all dealings with the council and the scientists so vehemently that they were forced out of the village before they could take any more of our children. There is no Shimusou clan any more, Vincent. That's how much you meant to them."

Vincent stared back at her, unable to speak past the ache in his throat. Fury and sorrow swamped him, and no matter how he struggled, he couldn't seem to press the emotions down.

Yuffie's grip loosened, and for a moment he was sure she had seen the struggle in his eyes, the rise of the demons — no, the summons, four faces to a single god — but then he felt her other palm against his, their calluses snagging and rasping against each other.

He gripped her fingers, more tightly than he meant to, and heard the bones grind. But then she squeezed back just as hard, storm grey eyes filmed with tears, and a smile that was nearly a grimace on her face.

"I don't know how you feel about this. I don't know if you know how to feel, right now." She swallowed hard, and her grip gentled. "But I wanted you to have the privacy to work that out. And I wanted to welcome you home, Shimusou Vincent."

He experienced a bizarre double urge, both to bow, and to press her fingertips to his mouth.

"Dryhg oui," he said, the words at once familiar and strange on his tongue, and Yuffie's eyes lit up like a sudden parting of clouds.

"So bmaycina."

* * *

[Day 23, 0530 Wutai Standard Time]

The Lady of Wutai woke face down in Nanaki's tufted shoulder, drool slicking the fur beneath her cheek. Eyes half-closed, she stretched slowly and thoroughly, until the steady rise and fall of his ribcage threatened motion sickness.

When she raised her head, Elena rolled her shoulders and made an indistinct morning noise from her post by the window. Yuffie gave an answering mumble as she eased from the mattress, chased by Nanaki's persistent, sleepy rumbling.

By the time she was dressed (six layers, no coat today), the Crescents outside the door had a note. Unrolled, it bore Asako's reed-like signature on the left, and a message about their prisoner on the right.

_There is more to learn, for some of you._

Yuffie read the list of names, and frowned. Sephiroth and Vincent, Feather and Aeris, and her. No Cloud. No Nanaki. She walked back to the bed and ruffled his mane gently.

"Apparently Gorov wants to talk. Wanna play fetch?"

Nanaki curled his lip in a mock-snarl, half rolled onto his back and flailed a paw over her shoulder to rebuke her. Then he turned his head so he could focus on the note.

A few hasty splashes at the sink and a deliberately painstaking wardrobe change later, Yuffie led Elena to the reinforced cell that held Gorov. Asako, Feather, and Aeris were already waiting. Reeve hovered beside Feather like an anxious goose.

Elena moved to where she could see them all, arms loose and ready at her sides. Yuffie could still see the tension in her jaw.

Asako wore a simple, sober robe with a thick black overcoat and a sash in a riot of pale spring colours. Yuffie smiled at the nod to imperial mourning, and bowed to Asako as deeply as the old woman had bowed to her. "Interesting names on your list," she said, and Asako quirked her lips.

"Not my list." She tucked her hands into her sleeves, and when she withdrew them, wooden amulets clacked against each other, strung from her fingertips on twists of coloured twine. "These will help your friends. Two for you," she added over Yuffie's shoulder, and dangled a pair of them at Vincent as he and Sephiroth approached. "If you take after your father, you need the extra."

Vincent's eyes darted from Asako to Yuffie, but he took both amulets and secured them to his belt without a word. Sephiroth's lips curved as he dropped one in the pocket of his shirt.

"You must be on guard," Asako advised. "Gorov was wily when she left us, and she has learned much in her absence. Keep your focus strong."

"And if you feel yourself wavering," Yuffie added, "Leave. She isn't going anywhere. Whatever she wants, we don't need to get it all at once."

She gave them a few minutes to prepare, gave Reeve a few minutes more to fuss over Feather and try to weasel his way into the room with them before Elena shut him down and escorted him back to the main house. Sephiroth appeared unworried; Aeris was swinging her amulet around one finger with a distant smile, and after her total lack of reaction to a stabbing, Yuffie supposed she had earned the right to be skeptical of the little block of wood.

Vincent stood on his own, flesh and blood thumb hooked over his belt between the amulets. When she approached, he barely glanced at her.

"Perhaps I should—"

"You'll be fine." She dangled her own amulet at him. "Grandma Asako's amulets are the best in the village."

True, that was because harming someone with said amulets meant you had to deal with Grandma Asako, and Grandma Asako had fourteen tall, strapping, and very obedient grandsons, but there was probably no reason to tell Vincent that.

"Even if you do start to slip, just — try for Gigas, okay?" She winked at his flummoxed expression. "I think he likes me."

With the face he made, she might have been better off telling him about Asako's grandsons.

* * *

Elena slammed into the room the Turks shared and kicked Reno's bed frame. "Up. They need you for an interrogation. I wasn't talking to you," she added to Rude, who held up his hands and sat slowly back down. Elena waited until Reno had dragged himself up and out of the room to put a hand over Rude's tumbler and slide it away from him.

She couldn't see his eyes through the sunglasses, but he could damn well see the look on her face when he moved to unscrew the bottle.

"No more of that. We need to talk."

Rude let his hand from the bottle, but she could see him closing down. Before she could think about it too hard, she leaned across the table and grabbed it.

"Hey," she said, nodded at his glasses. She waited. Eventually, Rude sighed and took them off.

His clear brown eyes were bloodshot and exhausted. More than that, he looked resigned. She let go of his hand, but stayed leaning over the table, her face only a foot or so from his.

"Whatever that bitch told you, you have to know that we don't care."

"You have… no idea," Rude said. She could see the tension in his jaw, under the beginnings of stubble. Elena shook her head.

"No. We don't. And you know what? We don't need to. What happened to you, what you did, and whoever you did it to… that's your business, Rude. I don't need to know about it to know that, whatever it is, it's probably not half of what we've done as Turks, together."

He blinked. Elena smiled grimly. This wasn't a direction he'd anticipated.

"None of us are clean, Rude. Not before the Turks, and not after. But I know that whatever we've done to other people, we're not going to do it to each other. We're _family_."

She was expecting refusal. She was expecting denial.

What she wasn't expecting was for Rude to sputter into laughter, choked and helpless.

"Family," he said, "is what she was talking about. People like me don't deserve family."

"Bullshit," she started, but he cut her off.

"No, Elena. We do need to talk. Family? I killed my family. My foster father wouldn't shut his mouth, so I hit him, and hit him again, and kept on hitting him until he stopped making noise." He spoke bluntly, the words themselves like blows against her flesh. "I did the same to his son when he tried to stop me, and started on his wife. The only reason I'm not rotting in prison is because when Tseng found me, I was hard enough to put down that I'd started sounding like an asset instead of a risk. You have—" and his voice finally cracked, "—no idea what you're talking about."

He started to get up, started to take the bottle with him, and before she could think about it her hand was on his wrist, clawing him back to the table.

"We do need to talk," she parroted, hearing the snarl in her voice. "Because neither do you. You think hitting people causes damage? I ruined people's lives, Rude. I did it to put myself through a better _college_ , not to get my fake-Plate-bourgeois ass out of a bad situation." She felt his arm tense in her hand, and held on to it, eyes stinging as she glared at him. "Tseng _didn't_ find me. I handed myself in when the people whose data I encrypted and sold finally got high-profile enough for their suicides to get reported on the Plate. And you think you're the one who doesn't deserve family? My mom still thinks I won a scholarship!"

Rude's hand, oddly blurred, reached out to rub over her cheek. She blinked, and tears stuck in her lashes.

"We're all no good," she said, mashing at tears with her free hand, trying to see his face. "We're even less good alone."

* * *

Two days strapped to a chair had made little difference to the Imbued. Her posture was, perhaps, less defiant, but her limbs remained loose and lax, and her expression had not shifted from arrogant boredom. Feather shrank from the Imbued's yellow gaze as they entered the cell, shoulders hunching as she skulked closer to Sephiroth's back. Were he and the swordsman not of a height, Vincent might have paid more heed to the fleeting urge to follow her example.

"Myto," she said, inclining her head toward Yuffie. "Ruf geht uv oui du yllabd so ehjedydeuh."

"Uin ruhuin du yddaht, I'm sure," Yuffie responded. She shifted her weight onto one hip, trouser pleats rustling, and gestured around the room. "Try a language we all speak, if you have something to say."

"Where shall I find my fun?" The Imbued's gaze flitted over him on its way to Asako, to whom she also inclined her head. "My thanks, grandmother."

"See that I don't regret it," Asako responded, settling down on a crate in the corner of the room. She straightened her spine as much as she was able, and gestured with the top of her carved walking aid. "You had something to say to Yuffie and her friends."

As if this were a schoolyard squabble, Vincent thought, and wondered if she had mediated exactly that between them, a lifetime ago.

But the creature in the chair resembled the dragon inside her more than she did the child in the photograph Yuffie had shown him. Her slitted eyes passed slowly around the room, focusing intently on each face, the inscrutable smirk never leaving her lips.

Her eyes met his for half a heartbeat, and he felt his throat constrict, but whether the amulets worked or there was no attack forthcoming made little difference. Chaos still flared in response to her presence, or his panic, and he spotted the answering alien glimmer from the dragon behind her slit pupils.

"Indeed, I did," she said. She tilted her head slowly to one side. "You see the scales."

To his left, Aeris snorted, and waggled her still-shredded fingertips. "I felt them well enough."

The Imbued's smirk became a thin smile. "They are unintentional," she said. "A flaw in the Imbuing process. Within months, perhaps weeks, I will be dead."

He saw Yuffie's shoulders tense, saw Sephiroth's spine straighten, and then Yuffie said, "What do you mean, a flaw in the process."

"I mean," said Gorov, with exaggerated care, "That the experiment, as performed, was largely unsuccessful. Those few deemed successes have problems of our own." 

Vincent thought of Staniv, wheezing through layers of brittle crystal. He thought of the dead, dark materia that had once contained Leviathan, of the driving, freezing rain. "When you die, you will no longer hold the dragon," he realised aloud, and knew by the stillness around him that the thought of an unfettered Bahamut chilled them all.

Sephiroth's head tilted slightly, his braid swaying with the movement. "Shiva was released, and recaptured." He turned, eyes sliding sideways to rest on Feather.

Behind him, Gorov's pupils flared with interest. "So we were right," she said to Feather. "You were a summoner, before this began. But an affinity for the ice goddess will not help you tame a dragon."

"Or a sea serpent," Aeris finished. Her fingers tied knots around each other. "But the lines of the summoners... surely they're too weak, too scattered..."

"So what's your angle?"

The sharpness of Yuffie's tone drew his attention; preservation instinct had him eyeing her stance. Feet planted broadly, hands on hips, chin slightly elevated — somewhere in his mind, the Galian Beast whined.

"After everything you've done, why the hell should we believe—"

"Yuffie."

The Lady of Wutai spun to lock eyes with her small, frail advisor, looking as if she might very soon abandon materia and simply breathe fire. Asako extended her fingers in Gorov's direction, and the Imbued's attempt at a disarming smile became something less professional, more wry. She bowed her head. The muscles in Yuffie's neck bunched, but she turned back to Gorov without comment.

"The work we began, we cannot complete," Gorov said, after a moment. "The Imbuing process takes too long, and remains too fragile. Even the most furious child would not destroy her mother for the sake of an endeavour doomed to fail."

Yuffie exhaled sharply though her nose, but kept any further comments to herself. Gorov's eyes flicked to her, then around the room, before she let their focus slacken to stare at the wall beyond.

"I was trained as a summoner. I know others when I see them, no matter how raw."

Someone else's hackles raised the hair on the back of Vincent's neck.

"When the Imbued perish, the gods we contain will be unleashed. Without trained summoners — without masters — unbalanced by those still sealed in materia. They will destroy this Planet and everything on it, unless I can teach you to seal them again."

* * *

Yuffie stomped the corridors as if she were four again, tired and tetchy and forbidden to climb the mountain, or pester the cats, or do whatever it was she'd been intent on. Right now, that thing was finding Vincent, and if she couldn't find him on Kisaragi grounds then she was going out into the streets to find him, promise to Cloud or no. There were more important things, and Vincent keeping secrets that might maybe kill him was one of them.

Where else would he even go? She'd already checked the gardens — they'd run across each other there so often in the last week, it had been the first place she'd looked. But she was running out of options inside the estate, and even with Gorov's apparent change of heart, she doubted Cloud would be happy with her going out of earshot.

She was on the verge of throwing open cupboards to see if he'd taken to hanging like a bat when she realised what she'd been glaring at through the window. The narrow covered walkway outside ran just above the servants garden, and the flowering vine that grew there had been damaged.

She plucked away the crushed leaves and tucked the vines back into place as best she could; they'd take hold again soon enough. A scuff on the bannister made her lips twist upward, and in a few moments she was up on the handrail, twisting to peek back over the edge of the roof.

"Tag," she declared, "you're it," and kicked off the bannister to haul herself onto the roof.

Vincent, sitting with hands loosely clasped over his knees, gave her an owl-eyed expression.

She was up over the edge before he'd thought to extend a hand toward her — a sure sign that she'd startled him out of his thoughts — and it was probably chagrin that made him stay put while she scuttled across the tiles to settle beside him.

Chagrin probably wouldn't get her a pat-down, though.

"Want to talk about it?"

Vincent blinked, and looked back out at the view. Yuffie resisted the urge to shine her pocket light at his cheek to check for scales. "A decision has been made. Until our training begins, there is little to talk about."

"Uh huh," said Yuffie, and the slight drop to his chin said Vincent had caught the sarcasm. "You sure have an interesting definition of 'little'."

His eyes flicked back to her, thoughtful and maybe surprised. That she'd worked it out, or that she'd come to ask about it? Her throat worked on a lump the size of a clenched fist.

"...I wondered, when you told me of my heritage. To have my suspicions confirmed..."

She couldn't breathe. She couldn't—

"...it is difficult to think about."

"Then don't think about it." It was louder than she meant to speak, but Vincent's calm expression didn't change.

"It is a difficult thing to put from one's mind, Yuffie."

" _Gods damn you, Vincent Valentine, I was right there with you in that cave._ " The words burst out all of a piece, a croaky, sticky stream of pain and fury. "Don't you talk to me about— don't you think I _know_ how hard it is— that doesn't mean it isn't going to _happen!_ " Hot tears leaked down her face, spit all salt and slippery like her words were vomit and she had to get them out.

She mashed at the tears with one hand, furious at the tears, furious at _him_ , and when his hand gripped her arm and he said her name she lashed out hard and fast with the other. " _Don't Yuffie me is this why you skipped all our beach parties you were made of fucking rocks—_ "

"Yuffie— Yuffie, stop!"

Her knuckles caught on bronze and leather, and even half-blind with tears, she froze so that his gauntlet wouldn't cut her. His fingertips held fast enough to bruise. And then, instead of her bicep, his good hand found her own.

"Yuffie, I'm not— there's nothing wrong. I meant..." He made a soft sound of frustration, and his fingers tightened. "I am not dying, Yuffie."

She stared at him, eyes stinging, refusing to hope. "B-but you just said—"

"I misunderstood, Yuffie." Again, that gentle pressure on her palm. "I thought... when you told me of my Imbuing, I wondered if Lucrecia could have known. She had access to the files, during the Jenova Project. And there had to be something lost when she died, something missing from the other clones, they were so fragile..."

Yuffie waited as he paused, the faintest crack between his brows as he pulled his thoughts into order. A gloved thumb stroked over the bone of her wrist, and was still.

"Whatever change she made, she included in her serum. The vial that opened me to Chaos. Whatever flaw the rest of the Imbued are subject to, I am free of it. Sephiroth, as well."

The furrow in his brow remained as he examined her face for traces of distress. Gradually his grip on her hand relaxed; the crease between his eyebrows smoothed away.

"I am sorry to have upset you."

Half a breath escaped in a huff of laughter and disbelief. And mucus. Gross. "Yeah, well," she said, trying to discreetly clean her face off with the back of one hand. "Don't tell anyone, but I would be really upset. It would be upsetting, to me."

Vincent made a soft, interrogative sound.

Yuffie floundered.

But only for a second.

"All this time and I never guessed you were made of materia? Can you see Cid's face? Or Barret's? I would never live it down. I would be forced to steal you and keep you here so no one would find out. For the good of Wutai."

"Of course."


	26. Bloodlines III

"Sit."

It was ostensibly an invitation, but Gorov didn't speak again until Vincent had taken his place on the short stool opposite. Barret and Reno flanked his seat, though for his benefit or hers he was not prepared to say. Not when she planned to commune with the shadows in his head.

"As I explained to your leader, to train you, I must know your current state." Gorov's eyes, cold and sour as citrine, were as impersonal as her words. "Which means the dragon must know also. It will be difficult. Unsettling, for you, and for the one who rides within you. Keep it leashed, or we must begin again."

The twist of indignation in his chest was easily quashed. Tendrils of dark amusement, an echo of wild laughter in his head, were another matter.

Anxiety crawled across his shoulders, down his ribs like a marching swarm. Gorov still watched. He steadied his breathing, and lifted his brows in a silent prompt to continue.

"Eyes closed. Make your mind as still as possible. Do not resist what you see."

* * *

For a long while, there'd been nothing but breathing, deep and slow. Then, as Cid found himself absently gnawing a corner of his glove for the third time since he and Tifa'd come on shift, the dragon woman's body had spasmed so hard her chair skidded a few inches toward the far wall.

They'd been tensed and ready in a second or less, Lightning materia sending blue light arcing between his fingertips, useless as Venus Gospel was in close quarters, but there'd been no more movement after that. Just shallower, faster breaths, the occasional shudder, a jerk of her head, as if she tried to pull back from something too close to her face.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tifa chewing her lips, relaxing her stance but not the tense set of her jaw. "Does she look… pale to you?"

Pale or not, she was sweating like a pig. Not ladylike little beads like Shera got across her lip in the sun, either; it trickled down from her hairline, wriggling between the scales and down into her collar.

"Should we—"

She came awake with a gasp, chair teetering for a moment before Tifa lunged forward to right it. Gorov hauled in breath after breath, choking and coughing on the air like it was salt water. Real fear showed in her eyes, and as Cid moved forward to get a better look, he suddenly realised why.

Chaos looked out from Vincent's eyes, a bloody, malevolent glow. Vincent's shoulders heaved, hunched to flex wings he didn't have. His mouth hung ajar like a scenting cat's, so that a sound fell out — a low, breathy huff too fast to be just breathing. Cid's stomach clenched.

It was laughing at her.

* * *

"Howdy, stranger."

Cloud blinked, and had to freeze before the automatic backward sweep of his elbow could take out the mug of coffee Aeris had just placed on the corner of the low table. "Aeris. Hey."

"Deep in thought?" She settled herself on the matting, legs tucked to one side, braid curling over the other shoulder. He'd forgotten how easy it was to lose himself in the deep green of her eyes until she closed them and tilted her head away from him, pointedly.

"Sorry, sorry. I, uh. I'm a little. Nothing's seeming very real today." He put both hands around the mug, had to remind himself after a moment to take a sip. "I don't think I got much sleep."

"You'd think you'd be used to Tifa working late." Not even a hint of rancour, just a twinkle and a smirk. He grinned, ducked his head.

"She's not usually guarding prisoners, these days." Just the good liquor.

"Mmm. We're going to have to let her out, though." Aeris grimaced, and then hid it behind her mug. "Summoning in a room that size wouldn't be pretty."

Cloud shrugged. His faith in Wutaian architecture wasn't that strong. "There are guard posts around the courtyard. Only the four of you will be training. Five," he added, remembering Feather. "We'll be down a few regular shift members, but nothing dangerous." He put a hand out across the table, drummed his fingers across her cool, dry knuckles. "We'll keep you safe."

Aeris looked tired as she withdrew her hand, but she smiled at him all the same. "It's not me I'm worried about."

* * *

Yuffie was focusing. Yuffie was focusing really hard.

The problem was, Yuffie was focusing on _not_ focusing on setting Gorov's head on fire with the power of her mind. It probably wouldn't be a very good idea, and besides, based on the newspaper clippings, that was probably more Vincent's bag.

Meditation had never been her strong suit. In fact, meditation was pretty much the lowest card she had, right next to 'impulse-control' and 'modesty', and if anyone had ever told her that one day the fate of the world would ride on her ability to 'go inside herself', she'd probably have cracked a joke (with appropriately inappropriate gesture) and laughed like a trumpet.

"Are you sure there isn't, like, a ritual we could do?"

To her left, Vincent sighed, and Sephiroth's soft curse was audible from beyond him.

"I'm just saying, some kind of sacrifice might be easier! Everyone's open to bribes."

"I nominate you," Sephiroth muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose, and Yuffie had opened her mouth to deliver a scathing retort about how gods waited eons for sacrifices like her to come along when Gorov shook her head, as if the idea had actually been worth something.

"Were we dealing with Yojimbo, that might be an option. But the Water God is no lost warrior." She resettled herself, loose and comfortable and yet still managing to sit straight as a spear. "Close your eyes and think of him. Remember him. Allow his presence to fill your mind...."

Yuffie closed her eyes and thought about tossing Gorov into a pig pen. The week after new year, when the leftovers went to the livestock, and their messes were at their messiest.

She thought of how the rains would come and the fields would flood and the streets would stink from all the half-rotted bacteria-infested jetsam that got left behind as the water receded. She thought of the storm clouds overhead and the constant, suffocating humidity and how it should have gone away, but it just kept raining.

She thought, _Leviathan, help me_ , but the only thing manifesting was disappointment, and an uncomfortable itch.

* * *

Vincent emptied his lungs, straightened his shoulders, and tried to ignore the dull ache in his pelvis. There were mats on the cobbles, but having sat for twelve of the past twenty-four hours, they didn't make much difference.

He inhaled. Grit and stone, soap and sap and damp, sweltering sunlight. Yuffie had fallen silent shortly after they were seated, today, and he wondered if it were fair to assume she had also fallen asleep. On his other side, Sephiroth's breaths were likewise deep and even, although the creak of his swordbelt on particularly deep breaths was a useful distraction.

Vincent preferred not to dwell on his guests.

Cid had told him what the demon had done, how shaken Gorov had been when she had regained her own body and mind. He could have warned her; he _had_ warned her. She had taken no heed, but Vincent had been living his own advice in this matter for many years. 

Chaos thrived on attention, and Vincent kept it carefully underfed.

He could not help but notice, though, the shifting in his skull. The Galian Beast paced, not alarmed but alert and disgruntled. Its vigilance kept him analysing every breath he took in through his nose, for all that the scent of the courtyard hadn't changed in hours, beyond the gradually increasing tang of perspiration. The Gigas was more patient, oddly content to sit in the day's soupy warmth and listen to the breath of his companions. Hellmasker waited, not patient, but still and silent as a cat waiting for prey to venture within reach. It watched every movement, its breath hot and damp behind his ears, grinning, anticipating.

"Shimusou."

He opened his eyes to find Gorov frowning at him, irritation clear in the downward turn of her mouth.

"If you aren't planning to try, you may as well leave."

He felt Yuffie's gaze as a prickling over his neck and shoulders, and felt guilt twist between his ribs. "I do not generally provide the demon an invitation."

"Perhaps if you did, you would not be so afraid of it," Gorov responded sourly. "Try, or go away. I'm sure your time would be appreciated by those on guard duty."

* * *

They stood together, stretching in the early afternoon. Sephiroth had moved twenty paces away, habitually marking out enough room for a sword he wasn't carrying, and was moving through a set of practice forms with speed and grace. Yuffie shook out her hands and then set them against the cobbles to flick her feet up over her head.

"So was she right?" she asked, voice distant, as if she had to concentrate. They both knew better.

By now, he supposed, he should be used to speaking to her feet, one way or another. "I have not aged. Despite all odds, I have not died or even been grievously injured since I… slept." He bent at the waist, ignoring the snort of laughter as his hair pooled around hands and toes on the cobbles. "I have reservations about what we gain by granting the demons freedom."

Yuffie's legs dropped to either side, her left foot colliding solidly with his lower back. Her tone made it clear it had been purposeful rebuke. "We know what you'd gain, monster man."

He twisted, frowning at the stone. "Is that enough?"

He heard a scoffing sound, and then her voice was abruptly over his head. He straightened to find her standing with both hands on her hips, cheeks puffed out as if she were trying to contain something. A few moments more, and she failed.

"What exactly do you think is going to happen?"

He stared at her. Did she truly not understand the dangers the demon posed? Something in his face made her scowl and throw up her hands.

"No, really, Vincent. Was the whole world full of chaos before Hojo cut you open and squirted you full of mako juice? Do you have this idea that the Planet needed you to put a summon in so that the rest of the world could be protected from it? Because before it was with you, it was with the Shinra. I'm willing to bet they did a lot more damage with it than it would ever do on its own. You know how they tend to 'improve' things. I'm pretty sure the Planet was better off with how _it_ organised things before anyone came along and started messing with it."

Vincent became aware that his jaw had slackened slightly. He licked his lips, and looked back at her feet.

"And I mean, let's think about this carefully. One, Galian Beast will belly crawl for ham hock and for _broccoli_ because he is _weird_ but not _evil_. Two, either you or Death Gigas or both saved me from a flooding building. Which, don't get me wrong, the Planet might actually have appreciated me drowning like a kitten, but fuck the Planet anyway! Four for you, Death Gigas! _Three _—"__

____

"Yuffie, enough. You are right. I…"

"Are you sure?" She tilted her head at him impatiently. "Because I can go on, believe me. I am only just getting started."

She had lost her father for this. And he— Vincent swallowed against his own shame and disgust. "I am sure. I apologise."

"Oh my gooooood," she groaned, and abruptly she brought both hands to her face, raked downward from her eyes to form a truly gruesome expression. "You are just so. I can't even. _Aaaaagh._ "

There was really no response to make.

* * *

Yuffie threw herself face first onto her bed and wriggled and rucked until the covers were all at the foot of the bed. She let a long breath filter slowly into the mattress, took in a quick lungful, and hissed out another.

She still kind of wanted to shake him.

She'd thought they were past this. She'd thought he was actually starting to be able to move past guilt and sadness and self-loathing into a good place, or at least a place that didn't just totally suck. And then she'd shown him the goddamn newspaper clippings and he'd gone right back into protect-you-from-myself mode, like she hadn't found the spot that made Galian's leg go, or they'd never played three-on-one (okay, five-on-one) to chill Gigas the hell out.

And the worst part, the _worst_ part, was she'd been so damn mad at him that she hadn't been able to concentrate on what they were supposed to be doing, so she'd been just as useless as he had.

She rolled onto her back, scowling into the darkness behind her eyelids until it throbbed. Her hands drummed restlessly over her stomach.

Nope. She couldn't sleep. She could feel it.

Stupid Vincent.

Yuffie wriggled against the mattress, stretching her neck long and pointing and flexing her toes until they cracked. She took a deep breath through her nose, laid her hands out loose beside her hips, and let her eyes fall closed on the exhale.

The breeze was light across her arms, her knees; the chimes outside her window stirred but faintly. Beyond them, the layered trill of crickets and cicadas in the gardens was deafening if she focused on it, strangely calming when she let it wash over her instead. Night sounds. Summer sounds. Home.

The only thing missing was rain.

She drew a breath, let it out. Imagined how it would start, the gathering clouds, the suffocating humidity. And then, the first drop against her palm, so small and warm it might be imagination. Another, a tiny muted impact in the dirt. Leviathan's tears, of joy and of sorrow, pouring his love of his wife into the world she had given her light for. Washing the remnants of darkness back into his deeps, crushing them, keeping them prisoned and the crescent safe.

She thought of safety and comfort, cocooned in the whisper of rain, all other sounds literally drowned out.

On the very edge of sleep, warm and weightless, something shifted, coiled close. And outside, it started raining.

* * *

The courtyard was still damp when they arrived the next morning. The smell of wet stone was familiar, comforting, even as the cold and damp of the cobbles soaked into the seat of her pants. The grit stuck to her palms and dug into her knees when she sat cross-legged, and the humidity made it feel like she'd climbed into her clothes straight out of a shower. But it all seemed right, somehow; at once refreshing and relaxing.

Yuffie lengthened her spine, slowed and deepened her breathing. Opened up the place in her head and heart that she used to call magic. Sank into the clarity, the tranquility.

She breathed in the scent of damp stone, thought of sitting sleepily outside her mother's chambers as the river surged higher and higher, churning its usually clear waters dark and violent, too great a risk for the Shinra to risk troops in or around. Remembered feeling heavy and light and cocooned, her mother's arms, the roar of the wind and the water blocking every other sound.

When it started, the rain was soft, barely there. She heard sounds of discomfort, but the mist was warm and gentle, with all the kindness Leviathan learned from Ashura, kept for Ashura. And she'd always loved the rain.

It grew gradually harder, colder. Metal grated against stone; Vincent was smart enough to go in out of the rain, even if he wasn't—

The wave of frustration washed over her, through her, and beneath it the fear, the urge to protect, the fierce, unwavering love. Her magic throbbed. The rain roared, and through it, Yuffie thought she heard a shout—

The wave was cold, salt, barely a lick, but enough to shock her and throw her off balance. She yelped, scrambled backward, grazes stinging and numbing in icy water up to her ribcage, and gaped at the flowing, looping coils of Leviathan, dissolving into mako spiderwebs and lattices and sparks and finally nothing at all.

Something caught in her chest, burning, expanding. The Lady of Wutai leapt to her feet, spinning and laughing and shedding water droplets left and right. She lurched sideways to tackle Aeris in a hug and drag her down into a splashing contest in the remnants of Leviathan's tide.

No sense wasting a courtyard-wide wading pool.

* * *

"Now, tell us what you did."

Washed, dried, and fed, they had left the flooded courtyard in favour of a training room attached to the Crescent barracks. Slightly soggy guards were posted around the room; Yuffie hoped they weren't too uncomfortable.

Then again, maybe if she sent them all to get changed she could avoid having to tell Gorov, Feather, Aeris, Sephiroth, and most of all Vincent what she'd been actually thinking about when she'd managed to summon a god.

"Um," she hedged. "Mostly what you told me to."

"Describe it," Gorov prompted, a touch of irritation in her voice. "Summoning is not a sport or an equation. It requires an affinity of purpose. What I call upon to summon the dragon will not help you summon the Water God, or you to summon Da Chao."

Vincent's expression darkened, and mostly to stave off that particular conniption, Yuffie said, "I think that was it. Affinity."

And then of course, she had to continue.

"I was thinking about... well, it had rained, and I was thinking about how comforting the smell was, and how I'd always associated rain and rivers and the ocean and Leviathan with, with comfort and protection. And feeling protected. And I was thinking about the stories of Leviathan and Ashura and... and then that wave hit me," she finished lamely, looking up from her fingertips. Gorov looked smugly pleased. Sephiroth just looked thoughtful.

"You were able to communicate a similarity of purpose to Leviathan when you called," he mused. "To align yourself with it, because you are so familiar with its legends and, through them, its intent."

" _His_ legends," Yuffie said. "And yeah, I guess. So?"

"So, I am not as familiar with Odin," Sephiroth pointed out. "And we are far from certain of the provenance of Chaos."

"Oh," Yuffie said, and puffed out her cheeks as she thought, letting the words gather. "Well, we have plenty of writings on Leviathan and Ashura and Da Chao, I think, but not much on Odin. Tifa might know, though. He's more of a mainland god."

"If we pool our knowledge, we might be able to suggest different avenues of approach," Aeris added brightly. "Things we might have in common."

"Research partyyyy," Yuffie droned, and fended off Aeris's indignant poke attack. "No, it's a good idea. We should get Asako and Gen to help; they'll know how _their_ elders told it, and the older it is the closer it is to right, right?"

* * *

Evening fell sooner than Aeris thought it had a right to, given the season. Sitting back from her notes, she closed her eyes and rubbed slow circles over the tension in her brow, listening with half an ear as Tifa walked Sephiroth through the fifth of nine alternative legends she had on the origins and nature of Odin. To his credit — or maybe the credit of Tifa's storytelling — the swordsman appeared to be absorbing the information with good grace.

She sincerely hoped they had come up with more information than she had.

The problem, she suspected, was that Titan was an old god. Incredibly old. From the first civilisations on the central continent, or what eventually became it, the scholars thought. Between war, enslavement, disease, politics, and invasion, there weren't very many legends on Titan left. 

The most interesting thing she'd learned was that his followers were keen on mud baths, and that there was some evidence to suggest that they'd covered themselves in clay and sat three days in the desert as it hardened to teach themselves the patience of the earth god.

She didn't really want to think about what that evidence was.

When Cloud shouldered in with a tray of cookies and hot, sweet tea to keep them until dinner, she all but leapt at the distraction. Vincent, too, was remarkably quick to abandon his research. She bumped him with her hip as she investigated the cookie assortment.

"Any luck?"

Vincent made a negative sound in the back of his throat. "Da Chao has many faces. Nothing that resembles... mine." He took a mouthful of tea. She saw a downward twitch that might have been a grimace, and he set the cup resolutely back on the tray. Aeris grinned, and picked up a sugar cookie.

Tifa, unwarned, drained her first cup in two long gulps, then screwed up her face and coughed. "Augh! He always forgets if he's sugared it already..."

"And this is why I have my cookie first," Aeris said, popping it into her mouth and dusting sugar back onto the plate. She took a long, slow sip, swallowed, and sighed. "Perfection."

Tifa rolled her eyes good-naturedly, downed a second cup of tea, and turned toward Sephiroth. "Don't need a break?"

He blinked, not quite a startle reflex. "... No. My apologies, I was... considering the legends you have shared. It seems likely that the SOLDIER program may well have been a fallback of an Odin imbuing. Enhanced sensitivity, vitality... not the skill of a god, but measurable, certainly."

"From what I understand of the early stages of the Jenova Project, that is... not impossible." Vincent gave half a shrug. "Useless to wonder."

"Not so," Sephiroth countered. "I wondered because the god, by all accounts, would share my opinion of the program. It was and is foolhardy in the extreme to grant power to those who are merely physically capable of withstanding its receipt."

Tifa thought about it, nodding slowly over a mouthful of cookie. "That does match with my sense of the legends. Do you think it's enough?"

"It may need to be. But finish your break and we can continue."

As Tifa dusted her hands on her top, Aeris pressed her finger to the plate to pick up stray cookie crumbs, and patiently drained the last dregs of tea into her cup. When she was sure that Tifa and Sephiroth were once again fully engrossed, she nudged Vincent's ankle with her foot.

"I have come across a few stories," she offered. "You've been reading mostly about Da Chao, right?"

Vincent raised his eyes and nodded.

"I've been reading... everything, mostly Titan, but there's lots about Ashura here and I've been wondering... Traditionally she has three faces, right? But over the legends, she's appeared as lots of things. Foxes, rabbits, fish, old women, young women, ghosts and bears and dragons."

"The sun," Vincent said, as if remembering. "A purifying flame."

"Right. It's usually three per tale. And I'm wondering... what if, instead of faces, they're just... aspects. Three aspects, and a combined form. A different set of faces for each person."

She felt his breathing still, and looked up sharply. Impossible to tell if he had paled, but he looked ill, shaken.

"You're saying there is no Chaos," he said. "No demons, just aspects of Ashura."

"I'm saying it's possible," she responded gently. "That's all. Legends are—"

Vincent tried to step away from the table, swayed. "I—"

"Vincent—"

"—a moment."

He was gone before she could reach out her hand.


	27. Facets

He couldn't be alone. Not really.

There was no silencing the chorus in his head. And with Kisaragi House locked down to protect the lady and her associates, and prevent the Bahamut-Imbued's escape, there was no avoiding the patrols. He fled watchful gazes three, four times before he found himself in the gardens and remembered a place he might find privacy, if not peace.

The wisterias had consolidated in the rain, and the space beneath them was thick with deep blue tendrils and the scent of flowers rotting. Vincent crawled into the low, dim bower and dragged himself back into the shadows of its depths.

Ashura. Chaos had once been Ashura, goddess of light and healing and growth, warmth and love. Compassion. Forgiveness. Life. Allmother. And he had corrupted her. Warped her purpose with his own petty existence, until her faces were unrecognisable.

Monstrous.

Impossible to respond to the enormity of such a thing. He lost time. It might have been moments; it might have been hours. In the half-light of the storm, beneath the wisterias, there was no way to tell. But the scrabbling of Galian had diminished to a low-grade whine, and the masked psychotic no longer sent its sudden lances of connection to disturb him. The Gigas, too, was quiet — present, but not wrestling for control.

Over them all, Chaos presided.

A watchful mother.

He barely made it to the edge of the wooden platform before his gorge rose and, heaving, splattered amid twining roots and dead and dying flowers.

As he lay spitting and gasping, a creaky chuckle filtered through the vines.

"Catching up on lost youth, Shimusou?"

Vincent stiffened, hauled himself to something approaching upright. Asako was barely the height of the bower, but he pulled in his long legs and scooted to the back of the platform to make room for her in the small and sheltered space.

"Bmayca vunkeja so nitahacc, knyhtsudran." The phrase was a familiar shape in his mouth, though it must have been over forty years since he had used it. "E famm nasuja socamv vnus—"

Asako's soft, gnarled hand grasped his arm firmly as she lowered herself to the smooth planks. Vincent stilled, acutely aware of the scent of his own bile.

"Sit, boy. A garden need not be empty to be tranquil." She patted at the arm as she released it and let out a long shuddering exhalation, settling into place like an ancient gargoyle preparing for the dawn. "Now. Head, heart, or stomach?"

Vincent stared at her, for long enough that she sniffed and said, decisively, "Head. Might be your heart that's bothered, but it's often the head that's at fault regardless, I find. What gnaws your liver?"

She did him the courtesy of keeping her eyes fixed on the garden outside, allowing him some measure of privacy even as she pried. The sensation of groping for words, unobserved but awaited, was a familiar one. It took him a moment to recognise its source.

"Yuffie," he muttered, shaking his head at the realisation. When Asako looked back with some consternation, he added, "She learned that from you."

The frown faded from the old woman's face, and amusement took its place. "Well, she's never been able to stomach offal."

"Ah," Vincent said after a moment, following the thread of the conversation back, and trying not to let the offshoot distract him. "Earlier, I… in our research…"

"You came across something that you weren't expecting," Asako guessed, shrewdly. "And you didn't much like it." She folded her arms across her chest, full sleeves bunching in her lap as Vincent nodded. "Well, I've read a good many tales in my time. They're more than simple stories, and there's more than a few versions of each. Suppose you tell me what you read, and I fill you in on the arguments people've had about 'em."

"There was no specific tale, knyhtsudran," Vincent said, the protest half-hearted, but the set of the old woman's shoulders said that she wasn't moving, and nor would he be. Wearily, he sought words. "You have heard, perhaps, of my… abilities."

"I have, perhaps, heard rumours," Asako allowed. Vincent swallowed.

"Three lesser, one greater. One greater, which seems to quiet the rest." His metal digits tapped along the cuff of his boot. "At first, when we found the materia labelled Da Chao, it seemed natural to assume there was some summon lost to history, which none of us had seen. A god of many faces, whose aspects had been forgotten, but whose powers I had inherited through the Imbuing process."

"But that is not the story of Da Chao," Asako murmured. "It is not a god, nor a single being, but a group of revered individuals."

"So I found," Vincent agreed. He closed his eyes. "Aeris read… more broadly. It was she who recognised a legend that better fit my… guests."

"Ashura," Asako said, with sudden comprehension, and Vincent waited for the inevitable reaction.

But when he opened his eyes again, Asako was shaking her head with wonder, not horror. "To think they took her from us, to force her into servitude. As though Wutai had not given enough." She shook herself from her musing with a jerk of her head, and her shoulders straightened again. "Well. At least their choice of vessel was a worthy one."

Vincent could only stare. Did she not understand? Did she not realise the monsters that had been made of her goddess?

Asako snorted, and Vincent realised he had given voice to his incredulity.

"Boys," she said, and her tone was fond, if exasperated. "Always thinking they can change the stars, and that a thing changed is a thing broken. No," she added sharply, as Vincent began to stir. "Stand and follow, Shimusou, and dust out the space between your ears. You have destroyed nothing, and I will prove it to you."

* * *

In the interests of limiting water damage, Yuffie relocated her summoning attempts to the supply docks behind Kisaragi House. The main canals were shallow most of the time, the supply barges that traversed them not requiring much in the way of draught, but they, like most of Wutai, were well-prepared for floods: the channel walls were steeply slanted, the docks largely pontoons, to account for rapid changes in water level.

All the same, Yuffie and Feather settled themselves on the pontoon closest to the sea. Monsoon season was one thing; she doubted the docks here had been crafted with Leviathan in mind.

The guards who accompanied them had learned from their colleagues in the training court; they took their posts on higher ground, giving their Lady and her companion plenty of space for summoning — and private words. A blessing, Yuffie suspected, given what may need to be discussed. Magic was already a deep and visceral thing; learning to call on and merge with a god was… probably even more intimate.

At least she could trust that Feather and her strange, uncomfortable sincerity would not tease.

The older woman eased herself down to sit with her back to a pylon, legs crooked modestly to one side. She dragged her fingertips along the surface of the water and smiled at the ripples of current around them.

Yuffie settled herself closer to the edge of the dock, legs crossed, back straight. When Feather didn't seem inclined to instruct, she said, "So."

Feather made a soft humming sound, but nothing further was forthcoming.

Yuffie had a brief, vivid flashback to the first time she had visited Asako, and pursed her lips.

"Pretending Shiva isn't sealed," she prompted. "How did you call her out? How did you put her… back?"

Feather made another slow humming noise, considering. "When I danced, she never really… not as herself. I could summon her ice and snow, but…"

"That was before the Shinra found you."

"Yes." Feather frowned to herself, still dandling her fingers on the surface of the water. "What I felt… joy in my own strength, the power of my body, the beauty of it. Pride. Defiance. And when I stopped… satisfied. Proven. Shown."

"Triumphant?" Yuffie hazarded, and received a brilliant smile. "Huh. I guess Gorov was right. It's… not much like how I felt when I called Leviathan." Not at all, in fact. She stifled a sigh. It figured that she'd have to figure it out on her own. By now, she ought to be used to it.

"She's proud," Feather said. "He is, too, I think."

"Aren't all gods?" Yuffie asked, aiming for rhetorical, but that wasn't right, not really. Ashura was not proud; she had confidence, but she also had humility. She knew her worth, and was content with it. Leviathan… Leviathan had an arrogance to his power.

The Lady of Wutai grinned. She didn't know anyone like that.

* * *

For an old woman, Asako was surprisingly fast. She was also, Vincent discovered, very free with both scorn and the back of her hand when impertinent young men tried to dissuade her from climbing Da Chao when the sun was at its zenith.

"The day I can't make the foothills of Da Chao is the day I can't climb out of my corpse boat before it launches," she informed him, half amused, half acid. From studious lack of concern on the faces of nearby guards, Vincent supposed that it was true.

They walked the main path for the better part of half an hour before Asako turned onto a narrower, overgrown trail at the edge of the forest, loosely following the stream that wound around Da Chao's foothills to join the Leviathan closer to town. It was another twenty minutes edging between chunks of sandstone the size of adamantoise, crabbing over ill-hewn stepping stones, that Vincent started to grow warm.

The pale gold of stone gave way to the greys and greens and blacks of moss and lichen, and moisture began to gather on the metal of his claw. A hundred yards on, the surface of the water steamed steadily.

"Grandmother?" he ventured, but Asako beckoned him upward impatiently, heedless of the path's increasing perils. He followed her example, crouching whenever he landed, and just as he began to gasp for deeper lungfuls of air heavy with moisture, the stone walls opened out to a broad basin, littered with steaming pools.

"Walk with care," Asako instructed him. "Most of these pools will scald but lightly, but some will strip flesh."

Vincent blanched, but Asako's footing was perfectly steady as she wove her way between pools dark with moss and bright with algae, underneath a dripping overhang and into a sheltered grotto. The air was too hot for a breeze to be a comfort, but there was movement enough to press his hair slick against his cheeks, a steady exhalation of steam from the cave's heated depths.

Even Asako began to wilt as she led him onward, her bony hands smoothing sweat back from her face, slicking thin hair to her skull. As the way began to twist and the light dimmed, Vincent's hand went to the PHS for the integrated flashlight, but before he could slip it from his belt, the mists ahead began to brighten and swirl. A faint hissing sound began to separate itself from the background sounds of water dripping and shod feet padding through the damp.

As the mists brightened and the hissing became louder, Asako slowed, one hand hovering over the wall to their right. She muttered a curse under her breath, wiping at her eyes. "A little farther, and then I will stop," she insisted when he offered her an arm, but she did not scruple to grasp his elbow firmly as the mists thinned slightly and they stepped into a slightly larger cavern, where the hissing became loud enough to obscure other sound.

"Leviathan's tongue," Asako said, pointing across the cavern to where the way forked. "There's a crack in the ceiling. Too many minerals in the water to erode!" She paused to cough twice, heavily, and swallowed a third with a look of contempt. "Take the path on the right. When you see it, return here."

"Grandmother?"

"Nothing to fear," Asako said, settling herself against an angled surface. "Just too damn hot in there, even for me."

* * *

A book lay open in his lap, but Sephiroth’s eyes focused elsewhere.

Considering what one had in common with a god was a difficult prospect. Battle prowess and a shared history of leadership seemed unlikely to stir the spirit of Odin, and a stubborn refusal to die seemed to be a more common trait than Sephiroth had previously suspected. Wisdom and knowledge were also apparently hallmarks of the god in question, but he felt only a tenuous claim to either, especially on the subject of spirituality.

Claims of godhood by half-baked copies did not, apparently, help. Yet he had had that arrogance once, that certainty that he had gained his skills by his own strengths, and was deserving of them.

Then, he had learned that his prowess was nothing more than an extension of the SOLDIER process. And now, more than that, the strength and skill that so many trite newspapers had referred to as superhuman… weren't human at all.

He closed his eyes, and thought of nothing.

Boots, a knock on the doorframe. A pause.

“…are you napping?”

Aeris’ voice, lightly twisted in a grin he was sure she learned from Zack. His chest ached. He opened his eyes.

“It's called thinking. I understand if you're unfamiliar with it.”

“Ooh,” she teased, lodging a hip against the doorframe. “Zack always said you had sass, but I never quite believed him.”

“A wise decision. He and his tales could be thrown much further than trusted.”

“From what he mentioned, you could throw him quite a way.” Aeris’ eyes glittered for a moment, and then she tossed her curls, dispelling the moment. “Anyway! I came to ask if you'd seen Vincent. I… upset him earlier.” A pause. “…actually, it looks like I've upset you, too.”

Sephiroth blinked. His lashes clung, barely, but enough to notice. He swallowed, blinked again.

“…memories,” he said after a moment, and Aeris’ eyes softened, glittering again. “But no. I've not seen Valentine.”

“Worth a shot,” she sighed, and slipped into the room to peer over his shoulder at the book in his lap. “Any luck with the soul-searching?”

It wasn't until her hand landed on his shoulder that he realised he was perfectly calm. There was no urge to twist and follow her movement with his eyes, no anticipation of attack, figurative or literal.

It was foolish in the extreme. He stood, and turned to face her.

"Odin has many associations," he said. "Death, battle, frenzy… but also healing… poetry… knowledge and the safeguarding of it."

Aeris quirked a smile. "I think we both understand the value and the danger of keeping some things secret."

"Quite." He closed the book he carried around his index finger, marking his place. "Odin was respected and feared. He had the admiration and obedience of his armies, and that gave him power… but that power was not what made him."

"It was wisdom," Aeris said, understanding. "Perspicacity. He understood."

"And so you see my dilemma," Sephiroth said, spreading hand and book with a bitter expression. "I was an accomplished general; I understood strategy, and I understood how men worked, in numbers. But comprehending the whole of a person…" He shrugged expansively. "I have proven — several times, I think — that I do not even understand myself."

* * *

It may well have been too hot for the damned. Sweat or condensation ran freely down the sides of Vincent's face. The hiss of pressurised air leaving the cavern was loud enough to halt thought. He followed the sound warily.

Away from the crack in the cavern ceiling, the way darkened. His shadow walked in front of him, cast against the steam by the little light that filtered around his body. The darkness turned to red, and he thought it was the heat until his fingers brushed the cavern wall and felt slick, segmented crystal instead of stone.

_A fountain?_ Locked in this hellish labyrinth beneath the belly of Da Chao, following none of the mountain paths, he could see how such a thing could thrive.

The darkness became hotter, steam roaring through invisible cracks in the crystal, red brightening at the edges of his vision, until the way widened abruptly, and he stood in the mouth of a materia geode. A hairline crack high on one wall distilled bloody light from the crystal into the steam. In the center, a fragile spire, blackened at the tip, reached for the remnants of a twisted red stalactite.

Vincent's right hand went to his heart, to the split materia in his breast pocket. It had balanced there once, he was certain, in the gap between the two crystal spines. This, then, was the birthplace of Chaos — of Ashura, corrupted as she was, as he had made her.

_You have destroyed nothing, and I will prove it to you._

What had Asako thought this destruction might prove?

His gaze fell past the spire to the clouded mirror surface of a particularly large crystal. There were several in the geode, surrounded by smaller spines and crenellations, but large enough and clear enough to see his own shape reflected, though darkly. He shifted, and the twin points of red light in the crystal shifted with him — and, slowly, dropped closed.

Vincent stared into the darkness, frozen, until they opened again.

Fear sweat broke through the steam, prickling across his shoulders and down his spine. Long canines dripped in the darkness, and more eyes opened at the corners of his vision; lurching, turning crazily, blue sparks crackling purple in the red steam. His knuckles ached, heartbeat throbbing too fast through his fingertips, through the materia in his breast pocket.

Fingers, yet. And human teeth, biting into his tongue. He, at least, did not change this time.

"What do you want?" he whispered, or thought he did, but Leviathan's Tongue devoured both words and echo.

In the roaring, red-lit darkness, something uncoiled. In his head, in his ears, he heard the crack of flames, the beat of blood and drums, the screaming and the fierce, frantic _joy_ —

He had no memory of leaving the cave. When he came back to himself, it was because of the breeze, warm and sticky but chill in the sweat on his skin after the depths of the heated caverns. Asako leaned against a boulder ahead of him, chin hovering just above her chest, apparently unruffled.

He felt scoured. Hollow.

"Why?"

Asako's eyes opened, and he realised the croak had been him. She straightened, grimaced, and rolled her shoulders. He could hear the cracks from where he stood.

"You saw?" she asked. Vincent dropped his gaze. Unwillingly, he nodded. He did not expect the chuckle, or the broad, gap-toothed grin.

"Her power remains. You destroyed nothing, Shimusou."

He started to protest. It had been the demon, playing tricks. Taunting him, making him see—

Seeing his protest, Asako folded her hands before her. "There is a tale, Shimusou, older than Wutai itself and rarely recounted. The tale of a wounded and grieving Ashura-under-the-Earth and her eventual emergence, in triumph most serene, with a headdress cut of bright volcanic glass: a face for her left, and a face for her right, and a face to guard behind her. Beneath them all, her true face, changed by trial and ordeal, but always and forever Ashura. Known to her, if not to others."

Comprehension tickled at the edges of the void. "You think they're defences. Barriers I put in place."

Asako gripped his bronze arm gently and without fear. "Children make monsters of what they do not understand, and cannot cope with. You had much with which to cope."

* * *

Midges and fireflies were thicker than thunderclouds as Yuffie made her tired, damp way back to the main house. She had retched into the river more than once, and she was soaked to the skin, but there was a shimmering presence somewhere under her brainstem or maybe behind her tongue that tasted of sleet and salt water. Feather could sense it, she was sure; the pale woman had kept her distance for most of the afternoon.

Then again, Yuffie thought as she mounted the stairs to the wing that AVALANCHE occupied, Feather may just have wanted to stay dry. Leviathan's waves were not as predictable as those of his namesake river, even if the pontoons did rise and fall with the water level. It hadn't occurred to the guards escorting her until they were soaked to the knee, and after that it became a point of pride. She suspected they were as glad to be waved away as she was to escape them, no matter who might be lurking in her bathroom.

There was no one, of course, but she was too tired and hungry to linger in the tub.

Even with exhaustion curled around her limbs, Leviathan's watchful stillness only made her want to move. She pulled on soft, tight leggings and a tank top and prowled out past the shutters in search of food.

She slipped into Tifa's co-opted kitchen in time to hear the other woman scolding someone to _hang that up right now before it gets any mouldier_ , and a grin was stretching her face because it was Vincent, but then—

Leviathan focused.

She was still moving, loose and languid with exhaustion, but Leviathan had stilled, every particle of his being, their being, locked on to Vincent and the shadow clinging to his skin.

It moved, but only faintly, as if blown by a weak and distant wind. It followed his form, but a half-second behind; the arms trailed behind, or maybe doubled; his face was smoky and indistinct behind multiple smeared alternatives, like he'd moved in the middle of an old long-exposure photograph.

Leviathan strained towards the shadow, and Yuffie reached out her hand. Eyes that blazed like the evening sun beamed through the shadows, and the smoke roiled around him.

Yuffie flinched away from the light and the movement and suddenly she was alone in her head again, and even more tired than she thought. She caught herself, poorly, on the edge of the table. "What...?"

Tifa knelt in front of her immediately, scrubbed fingers gently pressing and checking, muttering about water logging and the human need to eat and drink occasionally, and as Yuffie watched, Vincent vanished back inside his own face, not a shred of smoke to be seen.

"What was that?" she asked, lips and tongue strange around the words. "Leviathan... went."

Vincent's expression froze, closed. He left.

Tifa threw up her hands. "At least put some dry clothes on," she shouted after him, before returning her attention to Yuffie. "I do not know what has gotten into everyone today, but you at least are having something to eat before you stand up again. Got it?"

"Got it," said Yuffie's mouth. Yuffie's brain was still wondering what in the name of the Five had just happened.

Then Asako walked into the kitchen, and Yuffie no longer wondered.


	28. Water

Grandma Asako was in a similar state to Vincent, hair and clothing draggled with moisture, although Asako looked less like she'd swallowed a lemon. Tifa apparently had fewer qualms about the seven hundred year old regular human lady showing up the same way Vincent had, just placed an extra bowl on the table and told Asako tea would be ready shortly.

Asako settled herself directly in front of the hearth and sat as gradually as the settling of a glacier. Yuffie's nose wrinkled as she recognised the rising aroma.

"Leviathan's tongue?" she queried aloud, and Asako let out a gusty sigh, belatedly directed at the steam rising from her food.

"Your friend has some strange ideas."

Yuffie, more awake than she had been all day, tried not to eyeball Asako impatiently as she finished her food. Aeris entered, laughing with Cloud, and took a seat beside Yuffie. Cloud grabbed a bowl and received a kiss and a scrunch of his hair from Tifa on his way out of the room again. Tifa passed out mugs of tea and then sat opposite Aeris, with an expression Yuffie would have to come back to once Asako had answered to her satisfaction.

"What kind of ideas?" she prompted when Asako set her bowl aside, and the old woman snorted softly at her impatience.

"The kind where everything is his fault."

"Oh," said Yuffie. "That kind." In a room with Aeris and Tifa, she couldn't not roll her eyes, but instead of giggling Aeris looked troubled. Tifa's frown carved a darker pucker over her nose. Yuffie felt her stomach squirm. "What did I miss?"

"Vincent had been reading only about Da Chao, but I found some texts on Ashura that I thought might be more relevant," Aeris said, looking as if she were trying to remember if she'd left the oven on. "Her faces and different forms seemed like they may match better."

"Wait. Chaos might be Ashura," Yuffie repeated, "And you told Vincent?" She looked at the ceiling. She looked at her bowl. She looked at Asako, unable to articulate her frustration.

"I see you can guess what the boy did with that," said the old woman, flat with exasperation or exhaustion or both. Yuffie looked back to Aeris.

"Were you feeling nostalgic for his doom and gloom routine?" she asked, the lightest version of every furious admonishment rattling around in her head, at the same time Tifa hissed, "What were you thinking?"

Aeris seemed unperturbed by Tifa's sudden venom, but Asako clearly took it as her cue to leave. Yuffie hardly noticed the old woman's squeeze of her shoulder as she left the room, caught up in the unreal scene before her.

Had they always fought like this? Had she been too young to notice?

"It seemed to fit," Aeris said. "Why wouldn't I tell him?"

"Because Vincent might be older than any of us, but that doesn't make him any better emotionally," Tifa said. "Especially about his... Chaos."

"Yeah, telling him that his inner demon might have been the Wutaian goddess of all things good and holy was probably not, y'know, the smartest move," Yuffie added. "You know how he likes to think everything is his fault."

Aeris looked at Yuffie like she did not, in fact, know that, which was bullshit, because Vincent had always liked Aeris _most_ , what right did she have to go forgetting something like that?

"I guess the Planet didn't send back everything," Yuffie said before she could stop herself, and then it was out there in front of them all and she couldn't take it back. But Aeris just looked contemplative.

"She's right, you know?" Tifa said, almost apologetically. "We shouldn't... expect so much of you."

 _We shouldn't rely on you_ , Yuffie translated, _because you're dead._

* * *

Aeris thought for some time, frown growing more intense, but not really deepening. "Perhaps... someone should go after him."

Tifa glanced in Yuffie's direction. "Asako already spoke to him, but..."

Yuffie smiled, sweetly sarcastic, and slurped her tea extra loudly to drain her cup. "You think he needs to be annoyed to death? Leave it to me."

Tifa almost smiled. She waited until Yuffie had finished rifling through the refrigerator and trotted off down the hall before she turned back to Aeris, cupping her fingers over the back of Aeris' cold hand.

"I asked you back in Nibelheim to tell Cloud whatever was going on with you," she said. This, Aeris seemed to understand.

"You don't think I should any more."

"He still needs to know. I'm just not sure that you should tell him."

Aeris turned her palm upward and sandwiched Tifa's between both of hers.

"He won't fall apart again," Aeris said.

Tifa smiled, or tried to. "You always had such faith in him."

"We both did," said Aeris, and this smile was soft and sweet and human. "Just in very different situations."

* * *

Vincent paced the halls of Kisaragi House, bare feet whispering against the floor boards. He understood Cloud's reasoning, had known even before he approached the swordsman that he would not be permitted to speak with the Imbued in this state, but the answer still frustrated him. And with his agitation came others'. Galian paced, twitching at the slightest sound. The madman filled them all with furious energy. The Gigas climbed.

The roof of Kisaragi House was not the most practical location for weapon maintenance, but it was challenge enough to be a distraction. Unfortunate that he did it so regularly that it took no time at all.

Above him, the night was vast. Stars were clearer here than in Nibelheim; less light, and fewer clouds. His gaze traced constellations, followed the moon, but soon enough he found himself staring at the distant shadow of Da Chao, wishing... he knew not what. His mind was too disarrayed by the day's revelations to form coherent wants, except the want for enough time and solitude to form them.

Naturally, that was something he could not have.

He heard the scraping below the edge of the gutter, Yuffie's wiry hands and sneakered toes making more noise than they needed to; a courtesy rarely extended. He heard the soft exhalation as she leaned out to the eve, swung, and mantled the gutter.

She sat down beside him and lay back on her elbows. Stray locks grazed the tiles behind her, skimming the back of her arms.

"I don't have anything to say," she confessed after a moment. "I think you probably felt like you broke Ashura, but Asako said that was wrong. So now I guess you're not sure how to feel. That makes two of us, eff why eye."

Vincent closed his eyes. Galian, at least, was soothed with a packmate nearby. He supposed that meant that he was, also.

"I have no idea what to do with this knowledge," he said aloud. Yuffie nodded at the sky, heaved out a sigh bigger than he'd thought her small frame capable of, and lay back beside him, out of view.

"I brought you shells washed in fresh water," she said. "And broccoli, instead of jewel plums. Galian likes it better, and I don't think Ashura really minds."

It took Vincent a moment to recognise the traditional offerings to Ashura, and when he did, a chuckle puffed out of his lungs before he could stop it. It was a sad, strangled sound, but Yuffie understood a great many things she would do better not to recognise, and his pathetic unwilling laughter was one of them. She rolled toward him, twisted on one hip, and put her handful of shells on his chest, the floret of broccoli still cold and dewy from a refrigerator.

"I'm sure Ashura is grateful for your gift," said Vincent.

"She better be," said Yuffie, and pressed her knuckles into his upper arm in an exceedingly slow, gentle punch. "You want to tell me what the problem is?"

Vincent didn't answer.

"Because if Asako is right..." Yuffie prompted, her chin on one hand. Her eyes glittered from the shadow of her hair.

If Asako were right, he had no reason to fear summoning Chaos into the world. No reason, except the traumatic memory of an ill-trained child, and his own refusal to accept certain parts of himself.

Every child of Wutai knew that Ashura brought lessons, and the only way through those lessons was to learn and accept them.

Vincent shook shell fragments from the broccoli, and bit down on the floret. Over his crunching, he heard Yuffie's stifled laughter. He held up his bronze forearm as she reached over to dash the shells from his chest. She grasped the sharp claws fearlessly, and lay back down beside him.

Neither of them were, it seemed, practical.

* * *

Cloud paused in the doorway, eyes immediately wary, though he tried to deflect it with a grin. "What have you two been plotting?"

Tifa beckoned him closer, tugged him down to the table to sit with them both, and his expression sobered instantly. Warm, calloused fingers wrapped around hers. Her eyes stung as she squeezed back.

"There's something you need to understand," Aeris said. Cloud frowned across the table at her, but it was Tifa that spoke next.

"She isn't here forever, Cloud." _She isn't really here at all._

Cloud blinked, blank and blue, her own personal error screen.

"The Planet sent what she could," said Aeris. "Mostly, that was me. But she can't keep me here. I have to go back to her, just like everything else does."

Cloud looked lost, gripped Tifa's hand tight enough to make her leathers squeak. "When?"

His voice sounded so small.

Tifa opened her mouth to reassure him, to tell him it was going to be okay, that they still had time. But Aeris stood suddenly, frowning and listening to something they couldn't hear, green eyes soft and distant. 

"Soon," she said. "It's waking."

* * *

The news came through almost half an hour later.

Reeve heard first, then the Turks and Lana via company issued pagers as Neo-Shinra Workplace Health and Safety went to work confirming the safety of its employees. It wasn't much longer before emergency announcements began filtering in over Wutai's three radio stations, asking for anyone with friends or family in the greater Junon area to phone this number to register their loved ones.

Between the Turks and various AVALANCHE members, they put together a fairly clear picture of events: either one monstrous earthquake had hit just off the Junon coast, or a dozen merely catastrophic quakes had erupted in a daisy chain around it. Images of the destruction began appearing as television channels cut to emergency footage, even the best-funded camera crews unable to pick out more than a couple recognisable landmarks, despite the bright mid-morning sunlight.

"Fatalities are already estimated in the tens of thousands," Reeve told them, voice cracking. Tifa had brought him three coffees and he hadn't drunk more than a sip of any of them, could hardly keep himself upright in his chair with the weight of it. "It's only the first few hours, it's only... the quakes were so close to the surface..."

"God damned Imbued," said Barret, too furious even to thump anything. "Can't be nothin' else."

Aeris and Feather concurred. Gorov, when she was at last consulted, spat in frustration at being ignored by her guards, but agreed that the Imbued were the only possibility.

"Titan," she said immediately. "By now he assumes I can't or won't return. He'll need time to recover, but how long I can't say."

"You damn well knew he'd do this," Reno snarled. "Why the hell should we trust a word you say?"

"We can't wait."

Tifa flexed her fingers, eyes locked on the Imbued in their midst. "There's nothing we can do if she's lying. But there can't be another attack like this one." She leaned over the table, knuckles pressed into its surface, wrists straight, triceps tingling. "We need a location, and a plan."

Around her, AVALANCHE drew itself up, pulled itself together. She felt her eyes burn with sympathy as, one by one, they looked to Cloud, their leader. She stared at Aeris, helpless, knowing their timing could not have been worse.

Cloud's hands curled into fists on the tabletop. He closed his eyes, and she breathed with him, deep and steadying.

"Aeris. Cid. Work with Gorov on location and transport."

Tifa exhaled, and waited for her love to call her name.

* * *

The council chamber had been split in two, Reeve and Elena down one end, Yuffie and her advisors at the other.

Yuffie had one hand on the papers spread across the table and the other playing over her jaw as she thought. Roko and Haru sat by her side, suggesting options and following up with distant representatives as they set typhoon protocols in motion, with a twist: Titan would start with Shinra strongholds, Gorov told them, but he would come after population centres next. With his abilities, she assured them, he would not only attack the cities themselves, but wherever he sensed large numbers of evacuees moving over the earth.

Yuffie had explored every inch of her island, and even she was running out of ideas for where to send her people. The coastal villages were headed for deep water; the inland communities to high, clear ground. Wutai herself was the biggest problem; in typhoon they could find refuge on Da Chao or on the barrier mountains to the southwest, but an earthquake was a bigger problem, especially when it wasn't constrained to fault lines.

"If we send troops as a decoy..."

"If I leave you with Barrier materia..."

"If we bring the mussel boats inland..."

Too many ifs, too many options; she couldn't see a single one that would work to keep her people safe without doubt; she couldn't stop thinking about the materia and equipment she'd be taking into the Titan's lair and how much more use they would be to Wutai...

"Myto?"

Yuffie looked up, belatedly unclenching her fingers from the hair at the front of her head. Katsura bobbed the briefest bow propriety allowed her and laid another handful of papers on the table before her. "Lord Shirakawa has reached the southern province and has begun distributing supplies. He sends this list that can be rerouted north to Ebrana if necessary. Myto, there is also an offer from the marina to supply our people with the stock that would be left on land to rot..."

"Three times the price it should be, I'm sure," Haru said. She extended a hand. "I'll haggle and let you know the final price, Myto?"

Yuffie nodded to Haru, redirected her gaze to Katsura. "Ebrana may not require the supplies, they had great harvests this year, but if they can route to Holm..."

"To make up for the granaries? Yes, Myto," Katsura said, and bowed with renewed energy before vanishing from the room.

Roko leaned forward to tap her finger on the map of the greater Wutai area, over the medical campus southeast of the city. "Now, to the matter of our medical supplies..."

"Kid."

Yuffie looked up again, blinking, as Cid leaned around the door frame and floated a paper plane in her direction. She clawed her hands around it, careful not to crush.

"You're all packed and ready to load, as long as you're happy with the contents."

She unfolded the plane and skimmed the contents, nodding as she went. "You're a pal, Cid."

"Just let the boys know if anything's missing," he said. "Wheels up in four hours, kid."

Yuffie refolded the plane, tucked it into her shirt, and wondered when it was that she'd ceased to be annoyed by the nickname.

Probably around the time she started hating the new one.

"Myto..."

* * *

"Shimusou."

Vincent opened his eyes and glared. Gorov looked more tired than he had previously seen her, but otherwise unimpressed.

"You are closer, but you do not yet strive as you could. What will it take to move you, if the end of your world is not enough?"

Vincent, who had thought that he had been striving, felt a flare of irritation. "Perhaps instruction over vague criticism," he suggested acerbically, and Gorov shook her head, sinking into a crouch.

"I told you all," she said, and he wondered at the blood vessels showing in her eyes, at the crease of tension in her brow. "How I summon is not how you summon. It is a basic lesson, Shimusou, one of our first. I do not understand why it is proving so difficult for you when once..."

"When once I destroyed half my village, and was shipped away to the Shinra to forget I had ever had a homeland?" Vincent finished, annoyance and the bubbling of Chaos or Ashura in the back of his mind freeing his tongue. "Even if I do understand what is required of me, I cannot force myself to relinquish control."

Gorov frowned, golden eyes thoughtful. "Perhaps that is the problem," she said after a moment. "You put up walls against Ashura, and only draw upon her when overwhelmed, when as a child, you welcomed her."

Vincent swallowed against bile. "I cannot imagine welcoming such a thing."

Gorov eyed him carefully. "Perhaps I could show you," she suggested, and began to work one hand free of her glove. "I was young, and my memories may not be perfectly clear, but I was there that day. With the dragon's help, I could show it to you."

Vincent was shaking his head before she had finished the suggestion. "How could I possibly trust your motives?"

Gorov snorted, and laid her glove flat against one thigh. "If I recall, Shimusou, when last I attempted to ensnare you, Lady Ashura knocked me out flat. The dragon cannot compete against the allmother."

She held out her ungloved hand.

Against the snarling and hackles in his head, Vincent removed his own glove, and took it.

Gorov's hand was rough, tiny shards of what must be materia crystal pricking against the sides of his fingers. It was as small and slender as Yuffie's in his own.

"Focus," Gorov admonished, articulating crisply. Her eyes flared wide, and he felt himself unable to look away.

_Ready?_

The word floated in his mind. Doubt rose.

_No time. We begin._

Something struck him from the side, his balance tipped, and the world fell away. A rushing in his ears became a roar and then split apart into voices, laughter, drums.

It was early evening, and the last of the sun's light still streaked the clouds near the horizon. It would be a clear night, when the wind off the sea reached the mountains, and they were glad to be in the city, warm with smells and songs and family, instead of in the mountain temple they now called home.

Their sister tugged at their arm, pointing gleefully, but they were listening to the quieting of the music and the beginning of the lord and lady's speech, and they prised Chekhov's small fingers away. Disappointment welled in her enormous brown eyes until they pointed back to their parents and reminded her to start climbing their father if she wanted a good view of the dancing.

They dashed through the crowd toward the stage, toward their teacher, and past himself/Shimusou, still clinging to his parents, being ruffled by his father and straightened by his mother. They adjusted their own robes and made sure their pins were set tightly in their hair. 

They stood behind their teacher and began to stretch to give the fizzing mixture of excitement and nerves somewhere to go besides up. He/Shimusou jogged up to join them, fierce pride shining in his eyes, so inflated with it he looked like he might burst like a carnival balloon. They kicked his ankle, moved into a crouch to stretch their legs, and he dropped down beside them conscientiously, loose robes brushing the sand at the edge of the cleared stage.

As the lord and lady's speech came to an end, their teacher stilled both them and him/Shimusou, and stepped forward to begin the ceremony.

They stepped to the right, and Shimsou stepped to the left, until they were five long paces from their teacher and each other.

The crowd hushed, watching.

They stepped forward first, toes sweeping in the sand, arms spreading and lifting in the familiar motions. The dance for the dragon was fast, fierce, rare moments of grace and stillness in a dervish of limbs; their magic sparked and they held it in their throat, and held, and held, until at the final pose it burst from their lips in a stream of green fire, directed harmlessly away into the night sky. The crowd screamed its appreciation. They sought out their parents' proud, glowing faces, and the wide-mouthed awe of Chekhov, beloved little sister, and then sank to kneel on the sand, turning their face and curling their arms toward Shimusou, who sprang to his feet.

His first steps were slow and not smooth, but she saw his confidence grow as he put aside the crowd and focused on the movements, the balance, sinking into Ashura-Under-the-Earth and then speeding faster and faster as her three faces fought for dominance, dancing first in one direction, then in another, fans flicking. They could see the fierce pride in his face, baby teeth grit in a grin of pure delight as the dance built and his magic built with it until even they could feel it throbbing across the night. Shimusou went into the final movement, turning, circling, arms tumbling over each other as the tumult rose.

The wind stirred, the sand around them lifted. They inhaled quickly, the beginnings of fear stirring at the sizzling of the air.

Shimusou spun and spun and locked in place, arms lifting, and they caught the briefest glimpse of his face before white hot light eclipsed it all and he toppled from his chair, claw biting into the floorboards as he struggled to regain his bearings.

Gorov's breathing rasped loud in his ears and he realised she was trying to tug her hand free. The bite of jagged crystal against his palm made him hiss. He struggled upright again, wrenching the tips of the gauntlet from the floor. "That is what you remember?" It was not much like his nightmare, but the demons... Ashura... _he_ had lied to himself before.

"I was closest," Gorov said. "I didn't wake until after the fires had been put out. The sand turned to glass, and you cut your feet, but there was not much actual damage done. The real problem was the Shinra in the crowd." She coughed, grimaced, and wiped at her mouth. Her hand, or her face, came away bloody. "They were very interested in us both, after that."

"I'm sure," said Vincent. The demons were quiet. He felt disoriented, and faintly ill.

"Don't," Gorov said. She tugged her glove back on, and licked at her bleeding lip. "I was the one fool enough to go with them by choice. By all accounts, you had to be tricked into it."

"Thin comfort," Vincent told her, but he offered her a hand when he regained his feet.

* * *

There were not many places in Wutai where the Lifestream ran close to the surface. There were even fewer where the environment had been left untouched in the country's struggle to strengthen itself with materia after the war.

Aeris settled for climbing over the short fence in a temple courtyard and settling herself against the enormous, ancient tree that grew there. Even if she couldn't reach the Planet on her own, if she followed the roots deep enough, she would find the Planet's song.

Sephiroth stopped outside the fence, hands loose at his sides, and adopted the relaxed, upright pose of the waiting soldier that Zack had never mastered.

"It's going to be boring," she warned him, working off one boot. "Just make sure you wake me if it takes more than two hours. Cid gets grumpy if his flight plans get disturbed."

"I would think that the insights of a Cetra would be worth waiting for," Sephiroth observed. 

Aeris shrugged. "We'll see."

She closed her eyes and sank down into her flesh, into her bones. Into the living, breathing wood along her back. She followed the leaching of water and nutrient, into the warm topsoil and through the colder subsoil and regolith and into the empty, echoing pressure of the bedrock, like the distance between planets.

She reached and strove and there, deeper still, she could just reach—

The flood of voices hit her like a sudden rush of water, but she knew this wave. She sidled and wended her way through the voices, sifting, sampling, and beneath the noise the subharmonic of the Planet filled her, surrounded her, joined with her and welcomed her home.

She asked _how_ , and a hundred voices answered, and the knowledge was underneath her ribs and clenched between her teeth, and—

There was a warm hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes and ducked forward to hide in Sephiroth's shadow as her mind and eyes adjusted to surface again.

"All right?" Sephiroth removed his hand, but didn't withdraw, clearly aware of her disorientation. She nodded, swallowing a few times to wet her mouth enough to answer.

"I think I understand," she rasped. Sephiroth stood, and offered her a hand.

"I'm no closer to summoning, if you have suggestions."

Aeris pulled herself up and wriggled her toes in the dirt. She picked up a boot in each hand and high-kneed it back over the fence again. "I don't think you'll have to," she said, and it tasted like truth.

Sephiroth waited. She tied her bootlaces together and slung the pair over a shoulder as she picked and chose her words.

"I never really told you, when the Planet brought you back," she said. "But you guessed, didn't you?"

Sephiroth's expression didn't shift, but a faint, regretful smile came into his eyes. "I've died and almost-died enough to see it coming."

"Don't think of it as dying," Aeris said. She put her arm through his companionably, and they started across the temple grounds. "Think of it as finally coming home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning that while I am attempting to finish the last two chapters to post on April 29 and 30, I do still have some work to do. I apologise in advance if they're later than intended, but please rest assured I'm doing my best.


	29. Leviathan of Blackest Water

The further they traveled from land, the darker the skies ahead of them seemed to grow.

This was the territory of smugglers and the insane kind of explorer that was never heard from again; east of the eastern continent and west of Wutai. There was nothing to see but ocean, sky, and angry clouds drawing ever closer.

Cid kept muttering about hurricanes.

Sierra was smaller and sleeker than the Highwind, and there were fewer places for her occupants to hide. Mostly, the team stuck to the passenger bay, or the cargo bay if there wasn't much on board. Yuffie and her bucket were discouraged from holing up in the med bay (something about not disposing of used tranquilisers) so rather than puking on everyone's shoes, she was sitting at the front of the cockpit, bucket looped over the handrail, feet dangling into the void between the deck and the fish-eye of shatterproof glass. She couldn't have air in her face, but they were flying low, and the blur of water beneath them was better than the steady crawl at higher altitudes, at least where her stomach was concerned.

Tifa had been past to check on her twice, but the next time she heard boots on the walkway behind her, it turned out to be Feather. The other woman grabbed the handrail and let her feet skid forward, expertly levering herself into place on Yuffie's left. Yuffie took pity and moved her bucket to the right. "Kinda boring without Reeve, huh?"

Feather rested her arms on the lower rail, her chin on her forearms. "It's strange," said Feather. "Almost empty. Like being back where he found me."

"Not much out here," Yuffie agreed, and spat excess saliva with elegance and grace into her bucket. Feather tilted her head back and forth, tattooed lips pulling over her teeth.

"There's something."

Yuffie peered at the horizon. Between the sky and the sea... "Rain, maybe?" That was all it looked like to her; a faint suggestion of mist, a smudge that dulled the colours of the ocean.

"Maybe," Feather said, and that was the last Yuffie had from her for hours.

* * *

Boots on the catwalk and a cold nose on her cheek woke her. She opened her eyes to Nanaki curled beside her. Aeris stood at the hand rail, Sephiroth looming over Nanaki's back. His eyes flicked down to her and back up again, the sway to his braid the only real evidence of the shake of his head.

Yuffie wrapped her arm around her bucket and sat up carefully, reaching out automatically to scrunch her fingers in Nanaki's mane. Feather hadn't moved. Gorov stood beside her, unmoving, both hands clenched on the rail. Ahead of them, through the fish-eye, was Yuffie's 'rain'.

The view port was dry, the clouds not yet spiraled but smeared as the storm built. Cid had slowed Sierra to patrol speed and Yuffie could see every heaving wave, the ocean's surface reflecting the darkening sky.

Behind her, she heard the distinctive scrape of Vincent's boots on the catwalk as he, too, was drawn to the nose of the airship.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A reef, I believe," Nanaki replied in his near-subvocal murmur. "Shallower, warmer water; stronger weather patterns..."

"Titan," said Gorov, and Nanaki's ears pricked forward. "The reefs build towards an island, honeycombed with the caves I mentioned. It was a study outpost, once, but the Shinra abandoned it quickly."

"Great place to put a reactor," Aeris said. "Except for how expensive it'd be to do anything with it. I bet they were disappointed it was in the middle of nowhere."

* * *

The conversation flowed past Vincent like the ocean beneath them, indistinct and impossible to focus on. Whatever they were heading toward was impossible to see, but the sense of it had drawn him here to try to catch a glimpse, to prepare for the coming conflict. The sniper in him wanted a clear shot, but there was nothing at which to aim.

His shoulders were tense, impatient for wings.

Movement caught his eye; Gorov turned and pitched her voice toward Cid. "Be cautious as you approach. He will sense us eventually."

Cid grunted, gestured to the instruments around him. "You want to come keep an eye out, be my guest. I don't exactly know what I'm looking for."

It was Sephiroth who strode toward the pilot, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "A reef, you said. Populated? Coral, fish?" Gorov nodded. "Likely fed by hydrothermal vents. If the Lifestream or even magma flows close to the mantle here..."

"Hotspots." Cid's expression soured. "And unpredictable wind. Better keep that bucket handy, kid."

Yuffie groaned. Aeris tousled her hair.

"Not for long," she said. "We're getting close."

* * *

The promised turbulence nearly sent Yuffie and her bucket past the rails and into the fisheye, and came with a blast of expletives from the helm. She clung, wriggled backward and away from the rail just in time for the next batch of juddering, evil wind to bring her stomach up into her throat.

"Strap in," Cid hollered, presumably into the comm. "She's gonna kick—"

Yuffie pressed her fingertips through the catwalk grating, flattening like a cat. She twisted her head to watch the tilt of the landscape outside, tears in her eyes as she tried to keep from vomiting, vomited anyway when fear clenched her stomach at what she saw.

It wasn't just waves any more, it was steam, great plumes of it, as if the ocean itself were on fire. 

She saw the rhythm of the waves change, huge swells moving over the reef without breaking, and spat so she could shout, "Titan! It's Titan."

"How the fuck," Cid called back, snapping carabiners onto the stations around him to keep himself in place. Yuffie scrambled to her knees, her feet, abandoning her bucket.

"The quakes are underwater," she said. "He's destabilising the whole area, Cid, there's gonna be a wave, a hurricane." Her people, her villages, was anyone still in the lowlands— "You gotta get us down and get out of here."

"Gotta get there first, kid," said Cid through gritted teeth. Yuffie looked from him to the fish-eye, see-sawing wildly, and felt a different kind of tension in her stomach as she realised what to do.

"Cid," she said. "Think this through with me."

* * *

They all felt the summoning begin, heads snapping toward the bridge as Yuffie's magic flared, concentrated. Vincent's stomach dropped with the ship. "Leviathan..."

"She'll kill us all," Gorov spat, already wrestling with her harness. Nanaki shook out his mane, lips curling back over his canines.

"Yuffie would not call on Leviathan without need," he barked, moving unsteadily towards the bridge. Barret waved his prosthetic, stone-faced, and touched the communications panel on the wall.

"What's happening?" he said.

"Titan's opened up the ocean bottom," Cid said after a few moments' distracted cursing. "She's tryin' to drown the storm."

"She's what?" Cloud asked, eyes creasing, but Nanaki looked thoughtful, and Sephiroth nodded once.

"She's trying to equalise the temperature of the ocean," he said. "Titan used his abilities to create the perfect conditions for a tropical storm. Yuffie is trying to dilute them."

"But the area she would need to affect," Nanaki said, wondering. "Even Leviathan..."

"She doesn't need to quell it entirely," Sephiroth said. "All she needs to do is get us through."

* * *

Eyes squeezed shut, clinging to the guard rail, Yuffie summoned. Leviathan coalesced around her, scale after scale, and before he solidified she urged him through the fish-eye, into the ocean below.

 _Calm,_ she begged him. _Calm the ocean._

She'd never used a summon this way before; battle was one thing, when purpose was clear and focus was singular. Now, forehead pressed against cold steel, she felt the wave building with him and had to pull back from it, had to persuade him to the swift, spiraling thrash beneath the waves rather than summoning the currents to push behind his sails.

_Calm._

Yuffie saw with disjointed, strange-coloured eyes: coral bleaching, fish and eels and sharks half-cooked and floating to the surface, and Leviathan felt the scalding through his scales, the mineral gas in his gills, and roared. The current gathered around them.

 _More,_ she told him. _Bigger._

They plunged from the shelf into deeper, colder water, the spiral of their swim widening as they spun the water along behind them, finding the cold currents and dragging them upward, back toward the reef. They spun through the steam over the gaping, glowing maw of Titan's handiwork, screaming their rage and pain, twisting and churning over the reef, into the light and the air and back down into the cold black darkness on the other side.

"You're doing it kid." Cid's voice was distant. "A little further."

They dove, they pulled, they wove the current, easy as knot work, easy as the spin of her mother's fan over and under and circling, widening and widening and Nanaki's teeth on her wrist guard dragging her to her feet.

Yuffie watched Leviathan breach and hang, weightless, for long seconds, as light latticed over his scales and along his fins and he split into a thousand thousand glittering drops and vanished.

She let Nanaki tug her to the hangar bay. Leviathan wrapped around her, close and comfortable and cold as the depths of the ocean, and the deck beneath her no longer heaved with every footstep.

She was gonna need elixir.

* * *

Yuffie was near delirious with exhaustion when she joined them on the ground, but awake enough after a restorative to wonder aloud, "Why isn't he attacking?"

"You are young and healthy," Gorov said. "Titan has great power, but he is an old man still. It will take him time to recover. We must move quickly."

"Into a cave system, when Titan could regain his powers at any time." Sephiroth said flatly. "Beyond foolish."

"It's our only way forward," Tifa said, and that decided them all. "Lead the way."

There was little enough on the island to indicate that it had ever been a research post; a few stray poles from ancient tents, a half-buried fire pit lined with stones. Gorov led them away from the bare, weather-stripped shore line into tangled vegetation that smelled more of salt and mud than greenery. The stone of the mountain in its centre was bleached to pale orange, but as they ventured into the winding cavern, the rocks brightened to a deep orange-red that reminded Vincent of Cosmo Canyon. And then, as Gorov led them deeper, the walls began to shimmer, and the air gained a mako tang.

"Lifestream," Aeris said, tracing fingertips over the walls. "It flowed out through here, during Meteor. That's why there's a new reef."

"Yes," said Gorov, distracted. "Move faster."

Vincent understood the sentiment. Perhaps it was the effect of the Lifestream infusing the rock, but the caverns had the same crawling feeling he associated with the manor basement, of voices no longer heard. He paused in the mouth of an offshoot tunnel, letting Yuffie and Nanaki pass, and fell in behind her. Nanaki moved to trot beside her, tail flame making the wet stone steam.

There was a rumble of commotion from ahead, and their column slowed and halted. Gorov and Cloud came squeezing their way back up the tunnel toward them.

"The way is flooded," Gorov said. "There is another."

"Wait and move back if you're tired," Cloud said to Yuffie in passing, one hand going to her shoulder, but she shook her head, droplets flying in the darkness.

"I'm good," she insisted, and Cloud caught Vincent's eye as he passed. Vincent nodded, and fell into step behind him. He and Nanaki would be enough to defend her if she were too exhausted to fight.

The darkness and heat grew more oppressive as they descended, their footing slicker and more treacherous. Vincent heard Yuffie's breath stutter more than once as they went, and he sent glittering shards scattering noisily when he caught himself on a wall. He froze, and Gorov hissed for quiet, but there was no answering vibration, no rumble, no falling of rocks.

"Ra femm rayn ic," Gorov said. "Ku lynavimmo."

"Carefully," Vincent repeated for Cloud's benefit. "He may hear."

"He already knows we're coming," said Aeris from behind them. Vincent saw Yuffie nod, and turned back to Cloud.

"Faster," Cloud agreed. "If he could bury us now, he would."

Gorov made a sound halfway between a growl and a chuckle and plunged forward into the darkness. They followed, lights lurching, footsteps splashing in the dark.

* * *

The speed was not taxing, but the concentration it took to move without twisting an ankle would have been difficult enough without the suffocating heat rising up from the earth. Sweat itched beneath his collar, and Cloud's shirt was dark where it stuck along his spine. Gorov's hair was a slick rope down her back, slapping wetly against her leather as she led them steadily downward.

Nanaki's pant was harsh behind him, and further back he could hear Yuffie's steps, swift, but growing less careful of the noise she made. She nearly ploughed into his back when Gorov slowed abruptly, and held up a hand to still them. He felt her fingers briefly grip his shirt, and then she was at his shoulder, peering ahead into the gloom.

"Fa'na lmuca."

Gorov looked back at the soft pronouncement, nodding once, breathing through an open mouth. More used to ambush than endurance, Vincent surmised, but even so he had not expected her to tire so swiftly. Perhaps Lucrecia's serum had done more for him than he'd believed.

There was a faint glow beyond her, glinting through the materia shards sprouting from her temples. In daylight, he had not noticed them begin to turn toward each other, like petals, or a horn.

"The way widens here. He'll be waiting. Whatever else you must do to prepare..."

Vincent stepped down beside Cloud and cocked Outsider's hammer. Cloud ran a hand over the materia in the hilt of his sword. Together they stepped into the corridor, scanning for movement.

The glow was half crystal, half molten rock; too cool to move, too hot to darken and solidify. The ground was warm, even through his boots. He spared a glance for Nanaki, but Yuffie was already crouched beside him, rearranging materia to protect his paws. She stood again, eyes darting, and his tail flared brighter as the magic took effect.

Aeris stepped into the cavern, eyes distant as she reached out with her magic. Vincent felt the stir of the demons as it reached him and went further, out into the darkness. Sephiroth followed, Cloud's Murasame held loosely by his side. Tifa and Barret brought up the rear, the latter casting around uneasily for signs of instability as he moved up beside Vincent, prosthetic reshaping itself with low whirs.

"Not a good place for a fight, Vince. Watch your step." He cast another dubious glance upward. "And the ceiling."

"There." Aeris' voice was sudden and sure. "Dead ahead. Eighty yards."

Vincent let his eyes fall wider, Galian's urge to scent opening his mouth, flaring his nostrils. The scant light emanating from the crystal was only just sufficient, but as Titan climbed to his feet, his body turning to face them, the movement was enough to let his eyes resolve the haggard figure.

He raised Outsider to shoulder height, took aim, mind reaching for the Ice materia in its barrel.

Titan's shoulders rolled, skinny, cracking, and Vincent felt the rumble in his feet, his hips, his jawbone.

"Found you," Titan said.


	30. Ashura Under the Earth

Vincent fired.

Once, twice, and then the ground shifted sideways. He twisted, rolled behind Barret's cover fire, followed in Cloud's wake as the swordsman made a charge. Titan's arm lifted, and a stone pillar lanced from the ground, taking the brunt of Cloud's attack and Vincent's next two bullets. Frost spread over the surface of the stone, and Barret's next barrage shattered it.

Up close, the Titan-Imbued was less old and more weathered, muscle corded in his wrists and forearms, shoulders broad beneath the loose ragged shirt. He flexed his fingers, and a network of light sparked and streamed back toward his shoulder, the outline of an arm much larger than the Imbued's own.

Vincent dove, and Cloud braced, but his blade went spinning across the cavern and he staggered back,sword arm limp and numb.

Tifa was beside him, smashing through the rest of the stone pillar with a combination of Ice and raw force, but Vincent's shot went wide and Barret fired too late; the Imbued raised a wall of stone in front of himself and the bullets shredded its surface, achieving nothing but dust.

_Flick the cylinder, chamber the rounds..._

Nanaki loped forward, leapt and hauled himself to the top of the wall. He gathered his magic, mouth moving, and cold light flared—

_...random movement, don't look down..._

—and Nanaki sprang back awkwardly, snarling, as the rock wall shattered beneath him, Ice spearing uselessly into the air on the Titan-Imbued's right.

Vincent aimed again, but Aeris' voice made him pause.

"Why are you fighting?" she shouted. "You know you've lost."

The Titan-Imbued screamed, raw and wordless, and the cavern shook around them with the force of a scream much larger. The ground beneath Aeris cracked with a sound like a thunderclap. Yuffie dove, collided, rolled with the Cetra, and Vincent emptied Outsider at the Imbued as he moved to get between their opponent and his wrong-footed team. Gorov reached them at the same time, eyes near-black with the flare of her pupils.

"Ra'c mucd rescamv. Bnudald dra Yhleahd," she said, and then she was on her feet again, racing for open space, racing away.

Yuffie was on her feet, hissing at burns and grazes but looking forward, and Aeris had rolled to her knees, eyes cold and focused. Her forearm twisted oddly; she ignored it. Vincent reloaded, focused on his materia, but Yuffie was already muttering, casting a Wall. The ground shimmered beneath his feet, and he felt an instant relief from the heat of the cavern floor.

He aimed.

They were becoming more coordinated now, moving together. Nanaki froze a stone pillar, Tifa took it down, and Barret and Vincent fired until the walls went back up, their bullets only grazing through the monstrous shell of light encasing the Titan-Imbued.

The ground beneath them cracked and steamed as the Imbued slammed his arms downward, screaming, but the Wall held fast. Yuffie cast another to shield them as Gorov reached Sephiroth's and halted by the swordsman.

Aeris stood, concentrating fiercely. Her right hand twitched feebly, but she raised her left and her magic fizzed in his sinuses like loco weed, heart rate speeding, breath in gasps. Yuffie grinned, bright eyes and teeth, and he saw the triple-cast affect the others in turn; Cloud shook off numbness, Nanaki leapt and cast and leapt away as the Titan flailed after him.

Tifa's fists spread frost, Cloud's spell cracked stone, and lightning arced from Sephiroth's fingers. Vincent saw Titan go to one knee, teeth bared in a snarl. He slammed his hands into the earth, and the rock rippled and cracked like new-formed ice on water.

Barret's Wall slammed into place as the earthquake hit, protecting him, Tifa, and Cloud from the brunt of the attack, but only Yuffie had thought to Wall the ground. They scattered as the rock beneath them shook, stumbling for solid ground as the floor and ceiling crumbled. Yuffie screamed rage, denial, as Barret went down, then struggled upright again with Cloud under his arm. She levelled Oritsuru at the Titan, but Aeris grabbed her arm.

"Look."

Sephiroth had copied Yuffie's trick, stabilising his own footing even as rock showered him, but he also shielded Gorov, who was crouched with palms to the floor.

Her fingers curled, and she wrenched upward with a scream.

The world fell apart.

The platform of rock on which the Titan-Imbued stood shot skyward, brutally crushing him against the stone ceiling. The rock plate fell again, cracked, the wiry body in its centre broken but surrounded still in shimmering white-gold strands. Magma and Lifestream combined lapped at the edges of the platform, sending AVALANCHE into hasty retreat.

Sephiroth turned, ran with Nanaki for the exit, bright sword and flaming tail trailing behind them.

Gorov was still behind them, fingertips pale and green as her flesh became crystal. As he watched, her hands went to her throat, and she turned to face them haltingly, sagging as if every breath cost her. White crystal sprouted from her temples, spiraling together into jagged dragon horns.

She opened her mouth, shouted something, but the word was lost in a roar that shook the cavern, shattered the Wall.

Gorov wrenched her arm away from her throat to point to the exit.

The limb shattered at the elbow, and the rest of her body followed, dark blood welling through a shell of white-green crystal.

Behind her, sick yellow light was coiling, taking shape.

"What are you standing here for," Yuffie shrieked, hauling at his shoulder. "Move!"

* * *

She sprinted, sneakers sticking; Vincent to her right and Aeris in front. Eyes on the ground ahead, finding footfalls, when the ground split with a crack like a sonic boom. She skidded to a halt, grabbing Aeris and leaning backward, away from the searing magma flow that stood between them and the exit.

Beyond the molten river Sephiroth halted, looked back, face blank, eyes searching.

Titan roared.

Enormous chunks of rock fell from the ceiling. Nanaki and Tifa staggered back out of the passage to the surface, streaked with dirt and rock dust. Cloud and Barret sagged out after them, filthy and bleeding but alive for the moment.

Yuffie turned and stared at the Titan. White eyes stared back, lips pulled back to display teeth alongside the tusks protruding from either side of his mouth. He was hunched forward, crouched so that jasper and malachite beads the size of her torso pooled in the folds of the cloth between his legs. She could have driven the buggy through the gold cuffs on his wrists. He waited, expression a broad, smug sneer, as if he had all the time in the world to crush them.

He squeezed a caravan-sized hand into a fist, and the ground beneath Aeris cracked and crumbled. She lunged forward onto solid ground. Titan let out another blast of sound and the ground beneath Aeris cracked and fell away again; Yuffie and Vincent yanked her away from the expanding edge, and Yuffie felt her teeth set against each other in rage.

"You want to play games?" she seethed, throat burning. "You have us trapped where you want us and now you want to toy with us?"

Titan's shoulders rolled, utterly unconcerned, sending more detritus rattling down around him. His beads swung, dark glints in the magma light. He raised his hand again, and Yuffie raised Oritsuru, magic bubbling beneath her skin.

"You started this," she said. "You want to play with Aeris? With my home, my _people_? First you go through me."

She heard Vincent's _no_ , heard Aeris' _Yuffie wait_ but she was already sprinting forward, fingertips pressed around the Ice materia embedded in Oritsuru's underbelly, magic bubbling under her skin.

Titan slammed a hand flat to the ground; the stone rippled.

She cast. Oritsuru soared.

The ceiling cracked.

She covered her head.

Wind, and warmth. A trickle of sand.

Yuffie squinted one eye open.

Galian's horns curled forward over her head, the boulder that would have killed her cradled between them. Fangs and tongue and red mane hovered inches from her face, but no hot breath stirred the air on her face.

She stretched her fingers forward in horror, and encountered... metal. Warm bronze, shaped and sculpted. The still face of Galian Beast lifted away, tossed its head to rid itself of its burden, and turned to face away.

But another face slid into view, smooth and featureless except for empty eyelids. It twisted, spun itself upside down, and Yuffie felt the cold, soothing tingle of curative magic. The creature pushed itself upright, flexing wickedly sharp talons, and slowly stretching wings the colour of storm clouds at sunset.

Yuffie gaped.

It was all of Vincent's transformations and none of them. Galian's red-purple muzzle snarled out in one direction, Hellmasker's blank white face in another, and as the great head rotated again Yuffie saw the broad face of Death Gigas, eyes glowing like coals beneath the gleaming bronze of its brow. There were three arms, armour plated, tipped with five curved, gleaming talons the length of her forearm. Three legs, tipped with blades: a behemoth's paw, a blade like an ice skate, the broad, flat stump of Gigas. Each torso twisted, limbs interlacing, so that a wing extended between its opposing pair of heads.

Vincent hadn't summoned. He had Omni-changed.

His new form moved like a dancer, sometimes beautiful, sometimes frightening, but always precise. The faces spun, the wings lifted, and a shimmering barrier, larger than any Yuffie had seen, spread across the cavern, the Titan on one side, AVALANCHE and a stream of molten rock on the other.

Aeris slid to a stop at Yuffie's side, tugging, checking, and Yuffie let her.

"He did it," she said, strangled, and Aeris tousled detritus from her hair.

"You knew he would. But it isn't over yet."

Omni-Vincent's talons spun and whirled. He lunged, and his blades squealed across the Titan's flesh, issuing sparks. He beat his wings, leapt back out of range as Titan swung at him, scooped up a chunk of earth like a dinner table and flung it with all his might. It shattered uselessly against the barrier.

Omni-Vincent made a sound between a phoenix scream and a pipe organ mashed with both hands. His wings rose, beating furiously, gusts of wind and sand and _warmth_ rushing off them. The eyes of every face began to glow.

"Aeris! Yuffie!"

Yuffie heard Nanaki's voice, felt his head butt her shoulder, but Omni-Vincent shone brighter and brighter and she couldn't look away.

That sound again, in her chest, in her bones, too loud for breathing and almost, almost song. Omni-Vincent — Omni-Ashura — froze in her whirling dance, freezing and shuddering. Arms flung forward, wings twisted to beat backward, and a beam of light so hot the air seared in Yuffie's lungs shot from Omni-Vincent's whirling hands to pierce the Titan's chest.

Titan toppled.

The cavern crumbled. The barrier did not.

Chunks of rock the size of cottages landed around them, crunching against the barrier as Omni-Vincent circled, spinning, reinforcing, flinging detritus away. The ocean crushed in, spewing between boulders, steam building beneath their bubble as the water flooded underneath the shield to hit the magma stream below.

AVALANCHE clustered in its center, staring.

"How long will it hold?" Tifa whispered. "How in the name of Omni are we going to—"

Ashura kept up its dancing, but the face of the Gigas was turned to Yuffie, waiting. Watching. The rhythm of its near hands changed, and Yuffie recognised the movements.

Yuffie stood, and bowed.

The Dance of Leviathan was ingrained in her bones; twisting, snaking, flowing with the water. Her magic — the last of her magic — answered her, as she stepped in time with Ashura's hands, heart open and overflowing as light gathered around her.

Leviathan burst from her chest, weaving patterns too intricate for a human body in the air inside the bubble, slipping through the shield to perform his dance in the water as Ashura circled, faces spinning to meet him. Partners, lovers dancing, as the legends always said they were.

Leviathan spiralled and keened, the sound vibrating through the air as though the bubble were struck crystal. He pointed his nose to the surface, and his coils contracted, rocketing himself and Ashura's protection upward through the water like a cork. They flew, weightless, for half a moment, slid down the surface of an enormous wave, and Yuffie felt the impact in her bones as the shield was deposited firmly atop reef.

A few hundred yards away, through shallow water, was the shore of the tiny island, spitting and smoking with mako and ash.

Yuffie fell to the ground and started laughing.

Leviathan breached, long body arcing like a scaled, finned rainbow, trumpeting triumph. Ashura responded with another terrible sound like a choir of steam trains, and they melted away into a million trillion lights in the late afternoon and dissipated like foam on the water, Ashura's barrier going with them.

Yuffie, already flat on her back, didn't see Vincent stumble and fall face down on the coral, all dignity lost to exhaustion.

She would never stop being mad that only Reeve had a fancy vid-phone.

* * *

He woke to the scents of salt and smoke and synthetic emergency blanket. The night was oddly bright out here, sky clear, moon glinting off Sierra's hovering bulk.

It was cold, and he was hungry.

The others slept around him, loosely gathered around a low-burning fire. Aeris sat with Feather beside it, both of them staring into its depths. Sephiroth slumbered nearby, or appeared to. Barret's rumbling snores and Nanaki's softer ones merged with the sound of the surf.

He sat up, cautiously, expecting wounds but finding few to catalogue. Cloud and Tifa were nowhere to be seen — presumably on the airship with Cid — but there was one more empty bedroll, rucked and twisted in a knot.

Aeris and Feather glanced up as he approached the fire slowly. "Yuffie?" he enquired as she rummaged, and she handed him a collection of small foil packets and gestured to the beach, then handed him a second juice pack.

Yuffie heard his progress over the coral, twisted around to see him, and the smoothness of the motion made some tension in him ease. He offered her the juice pack and sat down next to her to drink his own, and carefully open his 'savoury assortment'. They watched the ocean roll.

"How does it feel, Ashurageh?" Yuffie asked, lips curled upward, eyes glinting.

Vincent considered. His facets were still present; he could feel their power still. But instead of the usual rush of thought and sense and instinct, they were quiet, perhaps spent after the battle. "Not much different," he admitted. Yuffie squeezed his arm encouragingly, and sucked at her juice pack until it rattled like an emptying drain.

"Thought so," she said when she was finished, and she sounded satisfied. Smug. She hadn't let go of his arm.

He shifted so that her fingers fell into his palm. He caught her eyes as she turned to him, searching. Questioning.

She laughed at him.

Then she dropped her juice pack.

She flipped her leg over his hips and pushed him back into the coral and kissed him, and kissed him, until she needed breath. Her fingers went from pressed against his shoulders to cupping at his jaw, one thumb smoothing gently along his bruised cheekbone.

She pulled back, eyes shining, crowned with stars.

"Goodnight," she said, "You giant, oblivious goober."

She rocked back on her heels, pushed to her feet, and walked back to camp without him.

Vincent watched the stars until they blinked out, very faintly smiling.

* * *

Cloud dropped the last few feet to the sharp, rocky beach. Cid looped one arm through the ladder, just in case. Aeris embraced the pilot tightly with her good arm, her broken forearm dangling at her side. Cloud was next, and last, and longest, and Tifa wrapped an arm around his waist when Aeris let go. He was shaking.

Feather waited further up the beach, Sephiroth loitering nearby. Aeris touched his arm as she passed, and then knelt before the worst of the rubble.

"Okay," she said. "Let's do this."

She closed her eyes. They waited.

The Lifestream began to react.

Feather nodded to Sephiroth. He drew Murasame, faced away from Aeris, and began to battle the air, precise and balanced, his magic gradually building as tendrils of Lifestream began to circle the island.

Vincent was next, and Yuffie shortly after, waking their summons, but not calling them, not yet.

Aeris's good arm moved out to her left, then to her right, waking the magic in the spear she'd borrowed from Cid. The master summon materia glimmered, then glowed.

Yuffie pulled at Leviathan, lines of magic chasing over the outline of his form, without calling on its substance. Vincent's face was taut on the edge of the change, teeth bared in a grimace. Sephiroth's blade whipped faster, more frantic, the lines of his blade leaving a silvery mirror-sheen in the air as he worked.

The full length of Cid's spear lifted into the air. Aeris hands shaped the magic, shaped the flow of the Lifestream, and one by one the summons began to appear, enormous shapes of light wrapped in Lifestream.

Aeris half-turned, reaching with her broken arm, fingers jerking painfully. "Let them go!"

Yuffie pushed, and the bulk of Leviathan seethed forward, his light diving into the pool surrounding Aeris. Vincent sagged, and for a moment Tifa saw Ashura as she was meant to be, six arms, blinding crown, trailing veils and blades as she leaped forward. Summon after summon, they rushed Aeris, melding their light with hers, speeding the vortex of the Lifestream whirling around her.

Sephiroth halted his kata, Murasame fully extended, and for a moment Tifa saw a vast cloak, a lance too large for any human to wield.

Aeris' magic wrapped around him, too, and there was a sound like a thundercrack. Cid's spear clattered to the ground, blackened and burned, still crackling with magical overload.

They were gone.

It was over.

* * *

[Day 32, 1630 Wutai Standard Time]

Reeve and the Turks were waiting at the airstrip. Yuffie saw him sag when he realised who was missing. He put a hand on Cloud's shoulder, tossed a dark Shiva materia to Feather.

"So much for your materia collection," he commiserated. Yuffie huffed.

"I'm a little more worried about the temples, to be honest," she said. "And the youth. Oh, the youth! How will we teach them to behave?" Reeve grinned.

"Just keep being the example for 'do not'," he said, and laughed louder when she flicked him in the earlobe. "World saved?"

"World saved," she reported. "Tell Caits four through twelve this finally proves we didn't need him. Although," she added thoughtfully, "Do you think you'll stay for the coronation? Because if you're sending him instead, then wait til after."

"Well, we can't stay," Reeve said regretfully. "But there's a chance we could make it back after we resettle everyone..."

"Uh huh," Yuffie said, eyebrows soaring. "I've heard that one before."

Barret nearly broke her spine, but he was eager to get back to Marlene and Elmyra. Cid scratched the back of his head and looked embarrassed and said he might be back, if Shera let him leave his armchair any time in the next year. Tifa bit her lip and looked worried until Yuffie took pity and said, "Just take him home. You both need time. I get it."

Tifa squeezed her tight and kissed her forehead and promised her long distance coronation cake.

Nanaki stood up on his hind legs, big paws over her shoulders, and headbutted her face until she had fur sticking to her face in the tear tracks and couldn't stop sneezing. She curled her fingers into his mane and up behind his ears.

"See you when you can drink, assbutt," she said, and he licked her deliberately on the mouth before bounding away. "Augh!"

"What about you, Vince?" Cid asked, pulling his gloves on, too casually. "Give you a lift to Nibelheim?"

Yuffie wiped her face and grinned as Vincent said, awkwardly, "I thought I might stay for a time."

"Did you?" she said. "Well, how 'bout that."

"If you have the room," Vincent amended. Cid made a sound like a cough behind his glove.

"I might have one in mind," Yuffie said, and punched Cid in the shoulder. "Go on, get out of here, before he changes his mind. Give my love to Shera and the washing machine."


	31. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! We're doing it now.

[Day 43, 1755 Wutai Standard Time]

Vincent hauled himself and a jacket over one edge of the roof, moving more carefully than he might have before. Without Ashura, they had theorised, he would no longer heal as quickly, no longer seem so impervious, even though his body's exposure to mako remained.

Yuffie lay flat on her back, arms spread. Vincent flipped the jacket over her torso, and brushed the hair from her face when the jacket's landing disturbed it.

"I know I'm being stupid."

Vincent lay back beside her, feeling the cold, hard grooves of the tiles through his shirt, knowing his lower back would give him hell for this later. It was still strange, still half a wonder.

"I just, it's nearly time, and I can't stop wondering, what if I'm no good at it?"

"Remind me," he said. "How many times have you saved the world?"

"I know. I know! And I mean, all my life I was arguing with dad about his decisions, I was so sure I knew what was good for Wutai, and now I don't have to have those arguments at all and I just—"

He rolled himself up on one elbow, reaching and dragging her in, careful to keep the tips of the claws away from her skin. He kissed the top of her head, and she wriggled pleasantly beside him until she was comfortable.

"Myto Yuffie will always find somebody to argue with," he said. She smacked him on the arm.

"I'm tripling your taxes. Forever."

"There she is," Vincent said, suppressing amusement. "Her legendary justice and charity..."

"Okay, okay, I'm going to bed." She threw the jacket over his face and scuttled to the edge of the roof.

She paused. He waited.

"...you coming?"

"I'll be right behind you."

He was.

* * *

FIN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone for your absolutely inhuman patience as I rewrote this over the last entire decade, holy crap. We finally have an ending, and I can finally write other things without feeling like a jerk. Much love and happy impatient waiting for the eventual remake Square keeps promising us, Cheloya/Rave/Rose Flame.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for your incredible patience.


End file.
